The New York Times Agency May 2010

(NYT25) GEE'S BEND, Ala. -- July 28, 2007 -- QUILT-CONTROVERSY-2 -- Loretta Pettway of Gee's Bend, Ala., in her home with one of her quilts on Thursday, July 12, 2007. Pettway contends that she was cheated out of thousands of dollars in proceeds from her quilts and copyrights. Until a decade ago, worn-out quilts made by generations of black women in Gee's Bend, Ala., were stuffed under mattresses or burned to keep mosquitoes away. But then Arnett, a white champion of self-taught black artists, began a rescue mission, buying dozens of the quilts and ultimately creating one of the biggest surprise hits in the art world's recent memory. The Gee's Bend quilts, pulsating with a sense of color and rhythm more akin to abstract painting, have since broken attendance records in the country's most elite museums. If the quilts were a blockbuster, however, the sequel came this summer: two of the quilters, Pettway and Annie Mae Young, filed lawsuits against Arnett and his sons, saying they had been cheated out of thousands of dollars in proceeds from their work and copyrights. The story line -- poor, uneducated black women swindled by "scheming Atlanta businessmen," as one newspaper article called the Arnetts -- was juicy enough to be front-page news in the South. (Jessica McGowan/The New York Times)