The Kentucky Quilt Project, Inc. (KQP), a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1981 and created the first of the state quilt documentation projects. It ultimately inspired the documentation of quilts at thousands of quilt days, generating projects that resulted in extensive research, exhibitions and publications. With the quilt projects spanning from 1980 to the present, more than 200,000 quilts have been documented in almost every state and a multitude of other countries.
In 1992, the KQP produced “Louisville Celebrates the American Quilt,” which consisted of six exhibitions, four conferences, and two publications. From one of those conferences, “Toward an International Quilt Bibliography,” the Quilt Index was born (http://www.quiltindex.org). It is an online resource of more than 50,000 quilts records, the largest online database in the decorative arts.
In 2011, thirty years after its founding, The Kentucky Quilt Project has created another “first” – a nine-part documentary series titled Why Quilts Matter: History, Art & Politics. The series takes a fresh look at quilts and spreads the word about their unique position at the center of a startlingly broad grid of topics, ranging from women’s studies to the contemporary art market.