The Winter Art Show

One tends to think of quilts as nineteenth-century fixtures, and it is a little startling to come across one seething with news from 1952. But L. B. Evans, who stitched this splendidly obsessive record, was clearly absorbed by the events of the day, and in this single document she combined news items ranging from the Korean War casualty toll, 106,671 by March, to the passing of Fala: “F.D.R.’s famous Scotty—age 12—dies in sleep—April 5, “52.” Here are Walter Reuther and Dean Acheson, Alger Hiss and Henry Ford II (“Ford says ‘Not Enough Cars for ’52’”), Whittaker Chambers, Bernard Baruch, Drew Pearson, John Foster Dulles, Thomas E. Dewey, and John L. Lewis, along with an affectionate aside perhaps stitched in February: “Roses Red/Violets Blue/No time for courting/I love you.” Among the scraps of quotation and the occasional religious admonition is an extended commentary that adumbrates Eiserihower’s coming election: “U.S. NEEDS much more than to get rid of TRUMAN . It needs to get rid of profligate spending: of a lot of excess Government power. It needs to get rid of secret diplomacy, and of inept international dealing. It needs a courageous, self-respecting golden rule foreign policy. It needs to get rid of the socialistic ideas that government is more important] than individuals.”