Image: San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles, Oakland
The San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles has issued an open call for 'The Next 50: A Bay Area Textile Open,' a juried exhibition scheduled for April 2027 as part of the museum’s 50th-anniversary programming. The newsletter announcement invites artists from across the wider Bay Area to submit textile-based work for a show that the museum says will examine the present in order to imagine the future of textile art. According to the museum, the project is intended to celebrate the breadth, innovation and vitality of textile practice today.
The exhibition is framed by the institution’s own history. In the call for art, the museum says that since its founding in 1977, it has championed fiber, cloth, thread, quilt and textile-based practices as vital forms of contemporary art. The museum presents 'The Next 50' as a way to mark that milestone while asking what forms, materials and ideas may shape the next half-century of textile art. The announcement places special emphasis on work that engages joy, resilience, identity, place, community, resistance, beauty, labor, memory and transformation.
The open call is limited to artists living in the Bay Area and surrounding region, including San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Solano, Sonoma, Santa Cruz and San Benito counties. Artists at all career stages are eligible, and the museum says it welcomes submissions from traditional, contemporary, experimental, community-based and interdisciplinary textile practices. Eligible media include quilting, weaving, knitting, crochet, embroidery, felting, surface design, basketry, textile collage, soft sculpture, beadwork, garment-based work and fiber installation, as well as mixed-media work in which textile structure is a primary component.
Artists may submit up to two works, and the museum notes that work must be ready to install. Wall-mounted pieces may not exceed 60 inches high by 60 inches wide by 12 inches deep; freestanding works may not exceed 36 inches by 36 inches by 10 feet. Ceiling-hung work will be considered, and the museum says artists must list the piece’s weight if they submit such work. Fragile work will be considered, but the museum excludes food, organic matter, wet materials and unstable materials. Accepted artists will be responsible for delivery and pick-up, while shipped work will be accepted with shipping, packing and return arrangements handled by the artist.
The museum also says the exhibition will not offer works for sale through the institution. There is no entry fee. Submissions must be made through an online form, with a January 1, 2027 deadline. Jury review is set for January, acceptance notifications are scheduled for February 8, and artwork delivery or shipping will take place in March, with exact dates to be announced. The exhibition itself is set for April 2027, and an opening reception is listed as to be announced.
The newsletter situates the call within a broader run of programming that includes current exhibitions and upcoming events at the museum. On view is 'A Mi Manera / My Own Way,' which explores the breadth and evolution of the Latino experience through textile art, and the collection display 'Dance of Life' highlights quilts spanning childhood to old age. A second collection presentation, 'Latine Textile Traditions,' is shown in combination with 'A Mi Manera' and focuses on Central and South American textiles and Indigenous influences carried into the present.
Elsewhere in the same announcement, the museum notes an exhibition opening on October 1, 2026, titled 'Soft Structures,' described as a presentation of intergenerational female artists examining aspects of female experience and challenging gender conventions through textile art. The newsletter also mentions a rug-making workshop with Cynthia Yadira Gonzalez on August 8, an estate-planning seminar on August 29, and a fall tour to Brussels, Bruges and Amsterdam running from October 25 to November 6, 2026. But the museum’s clearest forward-looking project remains 'The Next 50,' the Bay Area open call tied directly to its 2027 anniversary year.
