Kim Newton, “Wrapped in Possibility,” 2026, 58 x 60 inches, 100% cotton, Indonesian batik, quilted and Kim Newton, “First Chosen,” 2026, 37.5 x 71.5 inches, 100% cotton, Indonesian batik, quilted
Kansas City artist Kim Alexis Newton has spent more than 30 years evolving her textile practice, telling powerful stories through quilts. Walking into the Bruce R. Watkins Cultural Heritage Center to see “Sacred Seams,” I was reverent in the presence of dozens of authoritative Black women. The scale of these portraits is breathtaking.
Newton’s debut solo exhibition showcases her artistic and commercial success, while reminding viewers of the purpose of her quilts: to help people through emotional journeys.
Curated by Sonié Joi Thompson-Ruffin, the exhibition offers opportunities for viewers to find personal meaning in the quilted portraits. Organized by such “themes” as awakening, reclamation, endurance, origins, hope and power, the quilts return so much of what has been pilfered, especially in recent global current events.
I found myself gravitating first toward Newton’s explicitly political Hope is a Black Woman (2025) paired with a poem by Lynae Vanee titled Hope and Friends. The quilt features a gorgeous Black woman standing in front of a vibrant American flag. The woman raises her chin upward in confidence with her eyes closed. In the poem, Vanee writes, “My name is restoration. / You went for a revelation. / I used to be just like you, / when I got tired of patience.”
Both the hopeful quilt and poem speak to what Newton calls “possibility” in the Black woman’s life. Newton said, “I want us to hold on to this concept of possibility at every age. For many people, especially those taught to survive before they were taught to dream, possibility can feel unfamiliar, even vulnerable.”
After the quilt Radical Joy caught my attention, I found myself recalling lines from another poem — this one by Langston Hughes. In his 1922 poem, Mother to Son, the mother narrator explains, “Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair / It’s had tacks in it / And splinters / And boards torn up / And places with no carpet on the floor— / Bare; / But all the time / I’se been a’climbin’ on…”
Radical Joy reframes, and even challenges, that idea of endless resilience portrayed by Hughes. In Newton’s quilt, a radiant woman curls up in a blanket, wearing a sports bra and a messy bun, relaxed and beaming. Newton said, “Too often, Black women are celebrated for how much we can carry while rarely being given permission to simply be. Joy interrupts that narrative. It refuses the belief that our identity must always be rooted in struggle or survival. It says: I deserve delight too.”
Newton’s quilts have a complicated relationship with art history, dangling in a space that both observes and resists portraiture conventions. The quilt medium has only recently been incorporated into fine art culture, and here it shines, dismantling racially prejudiced and chauvinist mindsets that dominated Western museums and galleries for so long. As curator Thompson-Ruffin says, “Cloth becomes memory, witness and inheritance.”
While Newton’s connection to African American culture is unmistakable, there are also cross-cultural references incorporated into her quilts. Kintsugi, the Japanese practice of repairing broken pottery with gold, appears in The Importance of Gold (2026). The cracks in the woman’s skin are illuminated rather than concealed, but those cracks are made with a spectacular gold.
Three-dimensional elements and photographs offer an educational component to “Sacred Seams.” Vitrines showcase objects related to the process — swatches of fabric, a vintage Singer sewing machine, and a bible opened to the book of Matthew, bringing context and physicality to Newton’s quilting process.
Newton’s quilts are in the collections of Oprah Winfrey and Barack and Michelle Obama. She launched the first gift quilt company after a 20-year career at Hallmark, and she continues to send ripples through the art world.
“Kim Alexis Newton: Sacred Seams” continues at Bruce R. Watkins Cultural Heritage Center, 3700 Blue Pkwy., through Aug. 15. Hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.Tuesday-Saturday. For more information, 816.513.0700 or brucewatkinscenter.com.
