The American Folk Art Museum is an art museum in the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, at 2 Lincoln Square, Columbus Avenue at 66th Street. It is the premier institution devoted to the aesthetic appreciation of folk art and creative expressions of contemporary self-taught artists from the United States and abroad.
Its collection holds over 8,000 objects from the 18th century to the present. These works span both traditional folk art and the work of contemporary self-taught artists and Art Brut. In its ongoing exhibitions, educational programming, and outreach, the museum showcases the creative expressions of individuals whose talents developed without formal artistic training.
Admission is free. The museum had record yearly attendance of more than 130,000 visitors.[1][2]
History
Since receiving a provisional charter in 1961, the American Folk Art Museum has continually expanded its mission and purview. At its inception, the museum lacked a permanent collection, an endowment, and a building. Despite lacking these institutional fixtures, founding Trustees Joseph B. Martinson and Adele Earnest had a vision: the advancement of the understanding and appreciation of American folk arts. In the museum's nearly sixty-year history, this dedication has held true. The museum's evolving mission reflects the shifting understanding of folk art internationally.[3]
The Museum of Early American Folk Arts, as it was known initially, held its first exhibition in a rented space on 49 West 53rd Street in 1961. The museum's collection was launched in 1962 with the gift of a gate in the form of an American flag, celebrating the nation's centennial.[4] The gift reflected the museum's early focus on eighteenth and nineteenth-century vernacular arts from the northeast America.
In 1966, after receiving a permanent charter, the museum expanded its name and mission. As the Museum of American Folk Arts, it looked beyond the traditional definitions of American folk art. Its exhibitions and collection began to reflect “every aspect of the folk arts in America – north, south, east, and west.”[5] Founding curator Herbert W. Hemphill Jr. “expanded the notion of folk art beyond traditional, utilitarian, and communal expressions.”[6] Under his direction, the museum began to champion idiosyncratic and individualistic artwork from the fields of traditional and contemporary folk art. In doing so, the museum ushered in a new era in the field of twentieth-century folk art. The 1990s brought new focus to the diversity and multiculturalism of American folk art. Offering a more inclusive vision, the museum began to present African American and Latino artworks in their exhibitions and permanent collections. Director Gerard C. Wertkin announced American folk art's common heritage as “promoting an appreciation of diversity in a way that does not foster ethnic chauvinism or racial division.”[7]
The museum further established its broadened outlook with the 1998 formation of the Contemporary Center, a division of the museum devoted to the work of 20th and 21st century self-taught artists, as well as non-American artworks in the tradition of European art brut. In 2001, the museum opened the Henry Darger Study Center to house 24 of the self-taught artist's works, as well as a collection of his books, tracings, drawings, and source materials.
In 2001, the museum chose its current name, American Folk Art Museum. Recognizing that American folk art could only be fully understood in an international context, the word American functions as an indication of the museum's location, emphasis, and principal patronage rather than as a limitation on the kind of art it collects, interprets, or presents. The museum's current programming reflects this shift in focus. Past exhibits have included folk arts of Latin America, England, Norway, among other countries and continents.
As the museum's mission developed, so did its effort to establish a permanent home. In 1979, the museum's Board of Trustees purchased two townhouses on West 53rd Street, adjacent to Museum's rented quarters at 49 West 53rd Street. In 1984, while waiting to develop the West 53rd properties, the museum continued to organize exhibitions and educational programs from a former carriage house at 125 West 55th Street. Five years later, a new branch of the museum, the Eva and Morris Feld Gallery, opened at 2 Lincoln Square, New York, opposite Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.
The museum's former building, demolished in 2014.
In 2001, a new building on 45–47 West 53rd Street was opened. Tod Williams and Billie Tsien designed an eight-level building on a forty-foot-wide, one hundred-foot-long site on 53rd Street.[8] From 2001 to 2011, the midtown space served as the museum's main branch. However, facing increasingly high bond payments, the museum sold the midtown branch to the Museum of Modern Art.[9] When MoMA announced that it was going to demolish the building in connection with its expansion, there was outcry and considerable discussion about the issue, but the museum ultimately proceeded with its original plans.[10][11] The building was demolished in 2014, though the unique metal façade was preserved in storage by MoMA.[12]
Following the sale, the American Folk Art Museum used its facility at 2 Lincoln Square as its main exhibition and shop space. In 2014, the museum's archives, library, and administrative staff moved to Long Island City, Queens. In September 2017, the museum opened the Self-Taught Genius Gallery at its facility in Long Island City. The STG gallery shows art from the museum's collection in thematic exhibitions that change every few months. The STG Gallery is funded in large part by the Henry Luce Foundation.
Collection
Standing as "one of New York City’s great treasures",[13] the museum's 7,000 plus collection has been formed almost entirely through gifts. Spanning a wide variety of mediums, the collection includes over 1,200 paintings on canvas or panel, 1,500 drawings and works on paper, 1,000 sculptural objects, 1,000 textile items, 200 ceramic objects, 100 pieces of furniture, 300 decorated household items from the Historical Society of Early American Decoration, and two large-scale architectural models.
Additionally, the museum has a large collection of archives, artist files, films, recordings, photographs, original research, historical records, and other assorted and valuable ephemera. Most notably, the museum holds the largest collection of archival materials from self-taught artist Henry Darger.
The museum continues to add to its growing collection. In recent years acquisitions have included a version of Edward Hicks's (1780–1849) famed The Peaceable Kingdom. Notably, this painting, which Hicks gave to his daughter, remained with Hicks's descendants for many years. The portraits Increase Child Bosworth and Abigail Munro Bosworth by Sheldon Peck (1797–1868), Pickman's Mephitic Models by Paul Laffoley (1935–2016), Plantation Life by Clemmentine Hunter (1886/87–1988), and Heavenly Children by William Matthew Prior (1806–1873). Street artist KAWS donated a rare sculpture by self-taught artist William Edmondson to the museum in 2021.[14]
Hannah Cohoon, Gift Drawing: The Tree of Light or Blazing Tree, 1845
Exhibitions
Each year, the museum mounts a number of exhibitions, which span from the traditional folk arts to the more contemporary “self-taught” expressions. The museum's exhibits frequently examine the works of a specific artist or the significance of a particular medium, such as quilts or tinsel paintings.
Through its exhibits, the museum continues to develop the understanding of folk and self-taught artists. Past exhibits have showcased the works of “undersung” masters, such as Thomas Chambers and Asa Ames.[15] Additionally, the museum has hosted solo exhibitions dedicated to the work of self-taught greats: Martín Ramírez, Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, Willem van Genk, Ronald Lockett, John Dunkley, Paa Joe, and Bill Traylor.
Past exhibits have also positioned traditional folk art in conversation with more contemporary art. In the museum's 2008 exhibit, “The Seduction of Light: Ammi Phillips/ Mark Rothko Compositions in Pink, Green, and Red” explored the visual connections between Rothko's famed color blocks and Phillip's heightened color palette. In 2013, the museum invited thirteen fashion designers to create an original work, inspired by a piece in their collection. The resulting exhibit “Folk Couture: Fashion and Folk Art” ran from January 21 – April 23, 2014. Subsequent major exhibitions include 2016's Mystery and Benevolence: Masonic and Odd Fellows Folk Art, Securing the Shadow: Posthumous Portraiture in America, Eugen Gabritschevsky: Theater of the Imperceptible, Carlo Zinelli (1916–1974), 2017's War and Pieced: The Annette Gero Collection of Wartime Quilts, 2018's Vestiges & Verse: Notes From the Newfangled Epic, and, also in 2018, Charting the Divine Plan: The Art of Orra White Hitchcock (1796–1863). In 2019 the museum will show Made in New York City: The Business of Folk Art.
At the Self-Taught Genius Gallery in Long Island City, the exhibitions have included Holding Space, Handstitched Worlds: The Cartography of Quilts, and Roadside Attraction.
By raising traditional folk artists and self-taught artists from the periphery of the mainstream art world, the museum has continued to prove "the worth of instinctive, self-taught artistry."[15]
From 2012 to 2022, the museum's Executive Director was Anne-Imelda Radice. Stacy C. Hollander was the museum's chief curator and director of exhibitions from 1992 until stepping down in 2019.[16] Since joining the museum in 2013, Dr. Valérie Rousseau has served as the curator of self-taught art and art brut. Emilie Gevalt joined the museum as curator of folk art in 2019.[17]
Notable exhibitions
In 2014, the museum launched the exhibition, Self-Taught Genius: Treasures from the American Folk Art Museum. Featuring more than 100 works of art, "Self-Taught Genius" offered "an intellectually provocative effort to rethink the nature of artistic creativity" from the eighteenth century to the present.[18] Following its New York premiere, the exhibition travelled to six cities, as part of a national tour funded by the Henry Luce Foundation's 75th anniversary initiative.[19]
Publications
In December 2013, the American Folk Art Museum launched a fully accessible digital archive of 117 issues of its in-house magazine, Folk Art, formerly known as The Clarion. From winter 1971 to fall 2008, Folk Art, was published on average of three times a year. It served as a forum for original research and new scholarship in the field of American folk art. Topics ranged from traditional arts, such as portraiture, schoolgirl arts, painted furniture, and pottery, to original discourses on under-recognized artists.
Honors
In 2007, it was among over 530 New York City arts and social service institutions to receive part of a $20 million grant from the Carnegie Corporation, which was made possible through a donation by New York City mayorMichael Bloomberg.[20]
Museum gift shop
In 2013, the Encyclopedic Palace, in the museum's collection, served as the inspiration and theme for the 55th installation of the international Venice Biennale. Marino Auriti (1891–1980), a self-taught Italian American artist, created the work as an architectural model for imaginary museum that would house all worldly knowledge. Massimiliano Gioni, artistic director of the Biennale, detailed the enduring relevancy of Auriti's work. “Today, as we grapple with a constant flood of information, such attempts to structure knowledge into all-inclusive systems seem even more necessary and even more desperate.”[citation needed]
Gift shop
Cited as one of the "World's Best Museum Gift Shops" in Condé Nast Traveler, the museum's gift shop offers gift items, handcrafted in the folk tradition, such as jewelry, personal accessories, frames, toys, objects for the home, as well as note cards, books, and catalogs.[21]
Henry Joseph Darger Jr. was an American writer, novelist and artist who worked as a hospital custodian in Chicago, Illinois. He has become famous for his posthumously discovered 15,145-page fantasy novel manuscript called The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What Is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, along with several hundred drawings and watercolor illustrations for the story.
Folk art covers all forms of visual art made in the context of folk culture. Definitions vary, but generally the objects have practical utility of some kind, rather than being exclusively decorative. The makers of folk art are typically trained within a popular tradition, rather than in the fine art tradition of the culture. There is often overlap, or contested ground with 'naive art'. "Folk art" is not used in regard to traditional societies where ethnographic art continue to be made.
William Traylor was an African-American self-taught artist from Lowndes County, Alabama. Born into slavery, Traylor spent the majority of his life after emancipation as a sharecropper. It was only after 1939, following his move to Montgomery, Alabama, that Traylor began to draw. At the age of 85, he took up a pencil and a scrap of cardboard to document his recollections and observations. From 1939 to 1942, while working on the sidewalks of Montgomery, he produced nearly 1,500 pieces of art.
Thomas "Sam" Doyle (1906–1985) was an African-American artist from Saint Helena Island, South Carolina. His colorful paintings on sheet metal and wood recorded the history and people of St. Helena's Gullah community.
Eugene Von Bruenchenhein (1910–1983) was an American self-taught artist from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Over the course of fifty years, from the 1930s until his death in 1983, Von Bruenchenhein produced an expansive oeuvre of poetry, photography, painting, drawing and sculpture. His body of work includes over one thousand colorful, apocalyptic landscape paintings; hundreds of sculptures made from chicken bones, ceramic and cast cement; pin-up style photos of his wife, Marie; plus dozens of notebooks filled with poetic and scientific musings. Never confined to one particular method or medium, Von Bruenchenhein continually used everyday, discarded objects to visually explore imagined past and future realities.
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.
Thornton Dial was a pioneering American artist who came to prominence in the late 1980s. Dial's body of work exhibits formal variety through expressive, densely composed assemblages of found materials, often executed on a monumental scale. His range of subjects embraces a broad sweep of history, from human rights to natural disasters and current events. Dial's works are widely held in American museums; ten of Dial's works were acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2014.
John Bunion (J.B.) Murray was an abstract expressionist painter from Glascock County, GA. His work has been shown among folk art exhibitions and is included at the American Folk Art Museum and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and has been featured in many museum exhibitions, including "Self-Taught Genius" at AFAM and "When the Stars Begin to Fall" at the Studio Museum. His work is best known for its codified use of colors and improvised script, called "spirit script," which could only be translated by the artist.
Samuel Addison Shute (1803–1836) and Ruth Whittier Shute (1803–1882) were a husband and wife team of itinerant portrait painters active in New England and New York State during the 1830s. Ruth Whittier Shute continued painting through the 1870s.
Chester Cornett (1913–1981) was an American chair-maker and artisan His work have been the subject of monographic treatment both by regional museums and the University of Kentucky Press.
Justin McCarthy was a self-taught American artist. His work is in many important collections, including those of the American Folk Art Museum, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Petullo Collection, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The New York Times has praised his "paintings and drawings of gestural force and narrative interest." McCarthy's imagery anticipates the Pop art of the 1960s.
Reuben Moulthrop (1763–1814) was an early American artist based in East Haven, Connecticut. During his lifetime Moulthrop was famous for the wax figures that he arranged in tableaux, but he is known to posterity through his portraits, which are in many important collections, including those of the American Folk Art Museum, the Detroit Institute of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the New York Historical Society.
Pecolia Warner was an American quiltmaker.
Galerie St. Etienne is a New York art gallery specializing in Austrian and German Expressionism, established in Vienna in 1939 by Otto Kallir. In 1923, Kallir founded the Neue Galerie in Vienna. Forced to leave Austria after the 1938 Nazi invasion, Kallir established his gallery in Paris as the Galerie St. Etienne, named after the Neue Galerie's location near Vienna's Cathedral of St. Stephen. In 1939, Kallir and his family left France for the United States, moving the Galerie St. Etienne to New York City. The gallery still exists, run by Otto Kallir's granddaughter Jane at 24 West 57th Street.
Paula Nadelstern is an American artist, quiltmaker, author and teacher known for her kaleidoscope-themed quilts.
Johannes Spitler was an American painter of furniture.
Leroy Person (1907–1985) was an American sculptor and wood carver from a remote region in northeastern North Carolina. Person's sculptures, and later, drawings, are recognized for their particular sensitivity to color and surface markings.
Henry Speller (1900–1997) was an American artist and blues musician working in Memphis, Tennessee. His style of drawing and painting is characterized by ornate, colorful, intimidating figures which he likened to "characters from Dallas".
Yvonne Wells is an African-American folk artist and quilter from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She is best known for her self-taught style and her story quilts depicting scenes from the Bible and the Civil Rights Movement. Her work has been exhibited at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and at the International Quilt Museum.
Stacy C. Hollander is a scholar of American self-taught art and former American museum curator. She was the deputy director of curatorial affairs, chief curator, and director of exhibitions of the American Folk Art Museum. She also served as interim director of the museum in 2018.
↑ For more information about the history of the American Folk Art Museum, see Gerard C. Wertkin, "Foreword," in Stacy C. Hollander and Brooke Davis Anderson, American Anthem: Masterworks from the American Folk Art Museum (New York: American Folk Art Museum in association with Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2001), pp. 10–13.
↑ Brooke Davis Anderson, "The Contemporary Collection: Through The Lens of Language," American Anthem: Masterworks from the American Folk Art Museum (New York: -, 15).
Anderson, Brooke Davis. Darger: The Henry Darger Collection at the American Folk Art Museum. New York: American Folk Art Museum in association with Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2001.
Hollander, Stacy C. American Radiance: The Ralph Esmerian Gift to the American Folk Art Museum. New York: American Folk Art Museum in association with Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2001.
Hollander, Stacy C., and Brooke Davis Anderson. American Anthem: Masterworks from the American Folk Art Museum. New York: American Folk Art Museum in association with Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2001.
Kelly, Andrew. Kentucky by Design: The Decorative Arts and American Culture: Quilts, Coverlets, and Shaker Material Culture. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2015. ISBN978-0-8131-5567-8
Warren, Elizabeth V. Quilts: Masterworks from the American Folk Art Museum. New York: American Folk Art Museum in association with Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 2010.
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