The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum (AARFAM) is the United States' first[1] and the world's oldest continually operated museum dedicated to the preservation, collection, and exhibition of American folk art.[2] Located just outside the historic boundary of Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, AARFAM was founded with a collection donated by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and an endowment from her widower, John D. Rockefeller Jr., heir to the Standard Oil fortune and co-founder of Colonial Williamsburg.
With her seminal collection, Abby Rockefeller "elevated a body of material that had long been dismissed as homespun craft to a nationally-recognized and highly-regarded form of American art."[3] The original building opened in May 1957, with Mitchell Wilder as Director, and was expanded in 1992 before being moved and expanded again in 2007, each time to accommodate its growing collection. Abby Rockefeller's collection of 424 pieces became the basis of a collection that now includes more than 7,000 folk art pieces[2] dating from the 1720s to the present. A further expansion at its current location is projected to open in 2019.
Having opened originally as the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Collection (AARFAC), the facility changed names in 1977 to the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center (AARFAC) and again in 2000 to Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum.[4] Now co-located with the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum, both collections retain their respective names — and are together known as the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg.
History
After collecting a formative group of American folk art pieces under the advisement of consultants and art dealers, art patron Abby Aldrich Rockefeller anonymously loaned part of her folk art collection to the Museum of Modern Art exhibition American Folk Art: The Art of the Common Man in America, 1750–1900 which ran from November 30, 1932, through January 14, 1933 in New York. The exhibition would later tour six US cities, and in 2017, Antiques Magazine wrote that "whether or not there was unanimous agreement on the importance of folk art in that story, the category could no longer be ignored."[5]
In 1935 Rockefeller loaned part of her folk art collection to the Ludwell–Paradise House in Williamsburg.[6] Four years later, she donated the collection to Colonial Williamsburg, where it remained in the Ludwell-Paradise House until 1956.[4]
In 1956, after the 1948 death of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and two years after her husband announced he would endow a Williamsburg museum bearing the Rockefeller name, their son David Rockefeller augmented the collection at the Ludwell-Paradise House with another 54 folk art objects his mother had donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art.[4] The collection remained open to the public at the Ludwell Paradise House until January 1, 1956."[3]
In conceiving a new location for the collection, the Rockefellers had worked with pioneer collector in the field of American decorative arts and folk art, Nina Fletcher Little[7] who in the early 1950s suggested "the ceilings be lowered and the interior become a series of domestic-scaled spaces. She did the first research on the collection, made attributions of paintings, and wrote the first catalogue of the collection."[8]
The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Collection opened in May 1957 in a new two-story, purpose-built Georgian/Federal Revival brick building with a prominent oval garden — located just outside the historic district of Colonial Williamsburg at South England Street, adjacent to the Williamsburg Inn.[9] At this time (1957), the Ludwell-Paradise House, despite being the original real estate purchase by John Rockefeller to create Colonial Williamsburg, became a private residence."[10]
In 1992, the museum inaugurated a 19,000-square-foot single-story brick addition featuring a prominent planted wood and brick pergola and an adjoining fountain garden, designed by architects Roche-Dinkeloo.
In 2007, the AARFAM left the South English Street building and co-located the growing folk art collection with the nearby DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum— on Francis St. between Nassau and South Henry Streets, near Merchants Square. There, the collection occupied an expansion of 10,400 square feet of exhibition space with 11 galleries, entered via a notably circuitous arrival sequence beneath Colonial Williamsburg's adjacent Public Hospital of 1773 building.[9] With the AARFAM's relocation, the original building (with its oval garden) and the 1992 addition (with its fountain garden) became associated with the Spa of Colonial Williamsburg.[11]
The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation announced in 2014 a $40 million addition[2] to the Dewitt Wallace/Abby Aldrich structure to break ground in April 2017 and open in 2019 — to include a new 65,000sf wing and to feature a new more accessible, street-level entrance on Nassau Street.[11]
Collection
The 424 objects, collected by Abby Rockefeller between 1929 and 1942 remain the core of the collection, however the museum has grown into containing more than 3,000 objects today.[4]
The first year after its opening the museum came to include, besides Rockefeller's collection, works assembled by J. Stuart Halladay and Herrell Thomas, Holger Cahill, Edith Gregor Halpert, and John Law Robertson. Now the museum contains works of portraiture, Southern and African American folk art, sculpture, fraktur, and textiles. It includes representative works of well renowned artists, such as Eddie Arning, Wilhelm Schimmel, Erastus Salisbury Field, Edward Hicks, Lewis Miller, Albert Hoffman, Louis Joseph Bahin and Ammi Phillips. Various exhibitions of the museum regarded 18th and 19th-century painters such as Zedekiah Belknapp, James Sanforth Elsworth, and Asabel Lynde Powers.[4]
Abigail Greene Aldrich Rockefeller was an American socialite and philanthropist. She was a prominent member of the Rockefeller family through her marriage to financier and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr., the son of Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller Sr. Her father was Nelson W. Aldrich, who served as a Senator from Rhode Island. Rockefeller was known for being the driving force behind the establishment of the Museum of Modern Art. She was the mother of Nelson Rockefeller, who served from 1974 to 1977 as the 41st vice president of the United States.
Edward Hicks was an American folk painter and distinguished Christian minister of the Society of Friends. He became a notable Quaker because of his paintings.
Bertram K. and Nina Fletcher Little were prominent collectors of American folk art and active historians.
Gayleen Aiken was an American artist who lived in Barre, Vermont. She achieved critical acclaim during her lifetime for her naive paintings and her work has been included in exhibitions of visionary and folk art since the 1980s. She is considered an outsider artist.
The DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum (DWDAM), is a museum dedicated to British and American fine and decorative arts from 1670-1840, located in Williamsburg, Virginia.
The Old Plantation is an American folk art watercolor probably painted in the late 18th century on a South Carolina plantation. It is notable for its early date, its credible, non-stereotypical depiction of slaves on the North American mainland, and the fact that the slaves are shown pursuing their own interests. In 2010, Colonial Williamsburg librarian Susan P. Shames identified the artist as South Carolina slaveholder John Rose, and the painting may depict his plantation in what is now Beaufort County.
Rufus Hathaway (1770–1822) was an American physician and folk art painter. He lived in southern Massachusetts, where he painted numerous portraits between 1790 and 1795. He later studied medicine and established himself as a doctor at Duxbury.
Rebecca Couch was an American painter.
Mary Black, née Childs, was an American art historian.
Martha AnnHoneywell (1786–1856) was an American disabled artist who produced silhouettes and embroidery using only her mouth and her toes, often in public performances.
Emma Jane Cady was an American painter known for her theorem paintings.
Jacob Strickler was an American fraktur artist.
Johannes Spitler was an American painter of furniture.
Francis Charles Portzline was an American fraktur artist of German birth.
Johann Conrad Gilbert (1734–1812) was an American fraktur artist.
The Sussel-Washington Artist was an American fraktur artist active during the 1770s and 1780s.
Herbert Waide "Bert" Hemphill Jr. was an American collector of folk art.
Mitchell (Mitch) Armitage Wilder was an American mid-20th century arts administrator, scholar, and photographer. Between 1935 and 1961 he was the founding curator or director of three art museums: the Taylor Museum of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum at Colonial Williamsburg, and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas. Additionally, as director of the Chouinard Art Institute, Wilder facilitated the incorporation of that school for animators into the California Institute of the Arts.
Jacob Frymire was an American itinerant painter.
The Ludwell–Paradise House, often also called the Paradise House, is a historic home along Duke of Gloucester Street and part of Colonial Williamsburg in Williamsburg, Virginia. The home was built in 1752–1753 for Philip Ludwell III. In December 1926, it became the first property John D. Rockefeller Jr. authorized W. A. R. Goodwin to purchase as part of the Colonial Williamsburg restoration campaign. After being restored, the Ludwell–Paradise House held the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Collection from 1935 to 1956. The building now serves as a rented private residence in the Williamsburg historic area.
↑ Epstein, Dena J. (September 1975), "The Folk Banjo: A Documentary History", Ethnomusicology, vol.19, no.3, Society for Ethnomusicology, pp.347–371, doi:10.2307/850790, JSTOR850790
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