Philadelphia has just a few weeks left to experience one of the most moving exhibitions of the season. “Jesse Krimes: Elegy Quilts” is in its final weeks at The Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM), on view through Sunday, November 1, 2026 — and, as always at FWM, admission is free.
The exhibition brings together six large-scale quilts that Krimes began during the thirteen years he spent incarcerated, in a federal facility in Fairton, New Jersey, and completed after his release in 2013. Working with an improvised loom, he wove strips of cloth cut from his own prison sheets and clothing into luminous images of flowers, water and sky — gardens remembered and imagined while living between concrete and razor wire. An embroidered border of forget-me-nots runs through the works, a flower long tied to remembrance and to prisoners’ longing not to be forgotten.
Presented with Mural Arts Philadelphia, the show pairs this celebrated series with a selection of the intimate, meditative works on paper Krimes makes from natural materials gathered near his Philadelphia home. It is a powerful, hopeful story of creativity blooming in the hardest of places — and a reminder that the Fabric Workshop, at 1214 Arch Street, remains one of the city’s essential free art destinations. Catch it before it closes on November 1.
Photo: The Fabric Workshop and Museum
