The Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum opened in 1990 in Golden, Colo., with 100 traditional quilts donated by town resident, collector and museum driving force Eugenia Mitchell. Other historic quilts have been acquired, but the museum wanted something more: To show that quilting was a living art form that continues to evolve, passing on the DNA of the past while adapting to and incorporating contemporary practice and thought.

"Rooted in Tradition: Art Quilts From the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum" at Westmoreland Museum of American Art illustrates that continuance, as well as the generosity and pride of a widespread community of artists.

In 2001, the museum invited 70 important contemporary quilt artists to donate at least one work to the collection. Fifty-eight artists responded with 64 quilts, 48 of which are at the Westmoreland. They're grouped chronologically by the 1980s, 1990s and "new century."

A break-the-mold tone is set by the first -- and earliest -- work, M. Joan Lintault's 1980 "Heavenly Bodies." Its bedtop size and grid format follow tradition, but large cutout areas and Xerox transfers of nudes assert its creator's unique vision.

When more traditional patterns are used, they're shaken up a bit. The square-in-a-square blocks of Lynda MH Faires' 1997 "Tessera (Tiles)" alternate, seemingly randomly, with solid color squares. Her original intent, to make an improvisational quilt, was helped along by a gust of wind that blew the pre-arranged blocks off her design wall. "I interpreted that event as a sign that I was composing too rigidly," she writes in an artist statement, "and started over with a much less structured attitude," resulting in a composition that visually intrigues.

Materials may carry messages, as in Mary Mashuta's exceptional 1992 "Exploration: Learning to Get Along," comprising blocks of striped Indian cottons combined in a way that is harmonious yet optically lively. Her inspiration was South African apartheid and the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles. "As I worked on this quilt, I realized how much getting to know the stripes ... was like getting to know people with whom we are unfamiliar."

While Ms. Mashuta concedes a viewer would have to read her statement to know the underlying commentary, other quilters are overt, as in three dynamic works that are among the show's highlights.

Terrie Hancock Mangat's 1993 "Desert Storm" pulls out all the stops, its 951/2-inch-by-851/2-inch surface a cataclysm of phallic missiles wrapped in bows and ribbons that penetrate a sky crowded with red, white and blue planes, birds and clouds, the whole embellished with attached plastic skeletons, gas pumps and crushed toy cars.

With a stillness respecting its inspiration, the Rwandan genocide, Marta Amundson's 1994 "The New Holocaust" shows birds flying over a field of bodies against blocks of pieced African fabrics. Ms. Amundson's "Please Stay By Me Diana" seems cheerful at first with its oldies music title reference, energized crazy-quilt-like center and chili pepper border. But close inspection reveals an environmental plea for endangered Diana monkeys, two of which, fleshed out in applique and embroidery, straddle the colorful interior area while the ghostly outlines of others fade into a dark outer rim.

One of the most fanciful pieces, with nods to Matisse and mythology, is the commanding painted and quilted 1988 "Basket" by Therese May, a leader in the art quilt movement whose works have been exhibited in the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and in the Louvre, Paris.

The quilts vary in size, and range formally from Virginia R. Harris' electrifying color-saturated 2000 "Seeing Red" to beautifully nuanced works such as Erika Carter's 2004 "Solitude IX" and Laura Cater-Woods' 2001 "Canyon Music: March."

Trails were -- and continue to be -- blazed with technique and material, as artists paint, silk-screen, dye fabric, bleach areas of commercial fabric and as they add netting, mylar and beads. The surfaces may celebrate pattern alone; more likely there is a political, cultural or personal reference.

Jane Dunnewold's 1994 "Baby Quilt" is a double-entendre. It's the size of a crib quilt, white, with central images of a mother and baby framed by gold foil and white birthday cake candles. But the foil is burned in spots, the images printed smoky gray. Lines of embroidery read, in part, "Your children are not your children; they are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you. And though they are with you yet they belong not to you." Her words reflect a mother's dual joy and dawning realization that the separation begun at birth will expand with years.

Quilts moved from the bedroom to museum walls when Whitney Museum of American Art curator Jonathan Holstein boldly mounted the 1971 exhibition "Abstract Design in American Quilts." Mid-century feminist examinations of the domestic realm and roles of women furthered an appreciation of handwork, and the country's 1976 bicentennial reignited interest in heritage and traditional craft.

In 1979, the first Quilt National was held in the Dairy Barn Arts Center in Athens, Ohio (the next will be in 2011), and a 1986 exhibition proclaimed a new category, "The Art Quilt." In the 1990s, festivals and fairs began to judge quilts in traditional and art categories, museum exhibitions featuring quilts grew as did their attendance, and applications to juried shows tripled.

Quilters formed critique groups, more men began to quilt, and by the end of 1999 quiltmaking -- supplies, workshops, conferences, classes -- had become a $2 billion annual industry.

The Westmoreland, which has 32 quilts in its collection, has held a series of quilt exhibitions featuring historic, man-made, and contemporary works, and plans to continue to feature quilts in the galleries every few years.

The quilt exhibitions "have good visitation, and it's always a lively group that comes," says museum curator Barbara Jones. "We know how much people love them."

"Rooted" continues through Sept. 19 at 221 N. Main St., Greensburg. Curator Barbara Jones will conduct a walk through of the exhibition at 7 p.m. Sept. 9 (free). Admission is $5 donation, under 12 and students free. Hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays and until 9 p.m. Thursdays. Information: 724-837-1500 or www.wmuseumaa.org.

A catalog with color reproductions of the quilts, artists' statements and a brief essay is $45. For information about the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum, as well as such subjects as how to care for and preserve new and heirloom quilts, visit https://rmqu.org.

A high point of the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh Centennial Year is "ARTrageous Ideas: Pittsburgh Art and Culture," a discussion of the key role the arts play in Pittsburgh's growth, that will be held from 6 to 7:15 p.m. Thursday in Carnegie Museum of Art where the AAP Annual exhibition is ongoing.

Independent curator Vicky A. Clark will lead the free event. A reception will follow. Presenting organizations, selected because they provide opportunities for artists regionally, will include Ag Works, I Made It, Open Thread, Unicorn Mountain and UnSmoke Systems. (412-361-1370)

The annual "8-Hour Projects," during which artists produce a complete work on a 12- by 12-foot section of gallery wall over an 8-hour period, returns from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday at Allegheny College Art Galleries, Meadville. The public may observe, free.

Participants will be Ashley Pixelle Andrews, Claudia Giannini, Cara Lynn Kleid, Mary Tremonte, Shaun Slifer, Bill Rogers, Allison Meredith Whitney, and Berry Breen of Pittsburgh; Cathie Bleck, Darren Miller, Robert Hernandez, Heather Hertel, Matt Martin and Ann Tarantino.

The art remains through Sept. 26 and then is painted over. A reception and artists' talk will be held at 7 p.m. Sept. 7. Information: 1-814-332-3383 or www.allegheny.edu/artgalleries.

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