Arts and Entertainment

Berks' Freyberger Gallery presents the Social Justice Quilt Collaboration

Maureen Kelleher Credit: Provided. All Rights Reserved.

WYOMISSING, Pa. — The Penn State Berks Freyberger Gallery presents the "Social Justice Quilt Collaboration Project," a virtual exhibition which showcases a collection of quilts created by incarcerated men.

The exhibition will travel across the country beginning in 2022. It is presented by International Arts & Artists, a nonprofit organization located in Washington D.C., and the exhibition is co-curated by Maureen Kelleher and Jeffrey Wechsler.

Kelleher, a private investigator and social-justice activist who is also a visual artist, said she has had a long-standing interest in supporting wrongly convicted inmates who are serving life sentences. She has worked with inmates in Angola Prison, and she helped to exonerate several Louisiana death-row inmates. She also helped the Innocence Project to exonerate Andre Hatchett who was falsely accused of murder; after serving 25 years, Hatchett was released in 2016. In addition, she worked in the effort to free U.S. political prisoner Gary Tyler, who was released in April 2016 after serving more than 41 years.

The "Social Justice Quilt Collaboration" exhibition was created on the KUNTZMATRIX platform, which allows viewers to "move" through a virtual gallery.

The Freyberger Gallery will continue to provide art for the community through a series of virtual exhibitions this spring, in accordance with the Centers for Disease Control's recommendations on social distancing to slow the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. Exhibitions will also be available on the Freyberger Galley web page as iMovies or virtual galleries. For more information, contact Marilyn Fox, gallery director, at 610-396-6140 or mjf14@psu.edu

Last Updated April 15, 2021