Staff
Patricia Crews
Director
Patricia Cox Crews is Willa Cather Professor of Textiles and Director of the International Quilt Study Center & Museum at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The endowed academic center, created under Crews’ leadership, offers a unique graduate program in textile history with a quilt studies emphasis. The Museum holds the world’s largest public collection of quilts (more than 3000) dating from the early 1700s to the present and representing more than 30 countries.
Crews has published more than seventy papers concerning the history, conservation and performance of textiles.Her book Nebraska Quilts and Quiltmakers, won the Smithsonian’s Frost Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in American Crafts in 1993. Her more recent books include American Quilts in the Modern Age, 1870-1940 (University of Nebraska Press, 2009) and Wild by Design: Two Hundred Years of Innovation and Artistry in American Quilts (University of Nebraska Press, 2003). Wild by Design won the 2004 Textile Society of America’s R. L. Shep Award for best book in the field.
Crews holds a Bachelor's degree in fashion design and merchandising from Virginia Tech; a Master’s degree in textile science from Florida State University and a Ph.D. from Kansas State University in textiles with a minor in American history. In 2007, she participated in the Getty Museum Leadership Institute, a prestigious professional development program.
