After Dorothea Rockburne (2021) is inspired by Susan E. Bernick’s 1994 essay, “A Quilt Is an Art Object When It Stands Up Like a Man.” In it, she critiques many of the failed early attempts by contemporary art curators to showcase quilts. She asserts the truly American history of quilts and how the story of makers and cultures is often flattened into aesthetics by painters. In particular, she calls out Robert Rauschenberg’s 1955 painting, Bed. It is part of the MOMA’s permanent collection and is one of Rauschenberg’s early collage paintings.  It is an abstract painting over a pillow, bed sheets, and a log cabin quilt. The quilt was made by a well-known painter and at the time, fellow Black Mountain College student, Dorothea Rockburne. Bernick asserted that Rockburne had made the quilt to bring her daughter home from the hospital and that Rauschenberg had taken it from the laundry room for his painting. In a recent social media post the Rauschenberg Foundation said that it was given to him. Regardless of how he came to own the quilt, the MOMA doesn’t acknowledge Dorothea Rockburne as a contributor to the piece as the maker of the quilt on its website or when it’s displayed in the museum.