Making Home Where You Are: Quilters of Richmond. A Talk with Elaine Y. Yau, BAMPFA Curator
When
Saturday, October 10, 2026 from 1–4 PM, Talk: 2–3
1:00 PM – 4:00 PM
Where
NIAD Main Gallery
The curator of BAMPFA’s celebrated quilt exhibition Routed West on quilting history right here in Richmond
Come explore NIAD's newest exhibition, North Star, and join us for a special talk with Elaine Y. Yau, Associate Curator and Academic Liaison at the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA). Free and open to the public, Yau’s talk will highlight quilts made by African American women in Richmond, and you will learn about the creators’ stories and how they incorporated aspects of their lives into fabric.
Curated by Josh Faught, North Star brings together artists from NIAD's studio plus three guest artists who stitch scrap fabric, braided synthetic hair, hand-painted cloth, and embroidered notations into maps of memory, place, and community, using quilts as guides to help us find our way. Have a closer look before the exhibition closes on October 30!
Click here to RSVP to the event
About the Speaker
Elaine Y. Yau is Associate Curator and Academic Liaison at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), where her work with the African American quilt collection prioritizes collaboration with descendant families, contemporary quiltmakers, artists, curators, and scholars. Her most recent exhibition, Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California honored the creative ingenuity of Black quiltmakers who migrated to California between 1940 and 1970 from the southern US. She also partners frequently with faculty and students to activate the museum’s general collection to support the university’s education and public service mission. She is interested in telling inclusive stories of art in the US through some of her favorite artists, such as Sister Gertrude Morgan, Rosie Lee Tompkins, and Romare Bearden.
Making Home Where You Are: Quilters of Richmond. A Talk with Elaine Yau
NIAD Main Gallery
551 23rd Street, Richmond, CA
Saturday, October 10, 2026
Reception 1–4 PM
Talk 2–3 PM
