Marino Auriti with Il Enciclopedico Palazzo del Mondo (The Encyclopedic Palace of the World), c. 1950s

April 30, 2013

Dear members and friends,

The American Folk Art Museum continues to flower, I am happy and so proud to report.

We have carefully packed, crated, and shipped our beloved Il Enciclopedico Palazzo del Mondo (The Encyclopedic Palace of the World) off to Venice for its star turn in the 55th International Biennale—take a peek at the video at palaceonholiday.tumblr.com. And if you are making the trip to Venice, send us a photo with the Palazzo and we may post it on Tumblr as a tribute to all those in search of artist Marino Auriti’s dream, which was nothing less than the construction of a phenomenal edifice in which all worldly knowledge would reside. We look forward to seeing you in Venice!

Closer to home, more good news abounds. Fifty-three works of art selected by our curators from the Ralph Esmerian promised gift are now a permanent part of the Museum’s collection, such as the iconic Situation of America, 1848. Many of these superb works of art had been on view in Compass: Folk Art in Four Directions, which received critical acclaim during its run from June 2012 through March 2013, and we will continue to share these outstanding works as we roll out future exhibitions.

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) awarded the Museum their prestigious Art Works grant, which will support our scholarly lectures and symposia related to upcoming exhibitions. We express our gratitude to Acting Chairman Joan Shigekawa and the staff at the NEA for this recognition and support. Art Works grants support the creation of art that meets the highest standards of excellence, public engagement with diverse and excellent art, lifelong learning in the arts, and the strengthening of communities through the arts. We could not be prouder to be among this distinguished group of recipients.

On the subject of lectures and symposia, public programs at the American Folk Art Museum offer unique, enriching, and lively learning opportunities. Whether discussing traditional works (quilts, needlework, or chalkware, for example), or works of art by the self-taught (artists such as Nek Chand, Thornton Dial, or Bessie Harvey, just to name a few), the scholars and experts who lead our discussions are knowledgeable, enthusiastic, and eager to share ideas. We are planning an especially dynamic series of events beginning in June with the opening of Bill Traylor: Drawings from the Collections of the High Museum of Art and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, and a complementary exhibition organized by curators Stacy C. Hollander and Dr. Valérie Rousseau, titled “Traylor in Motion: Wonders from New York Collections.” The latter exhibition will provide a rare opportunity to view 39 works of art from prestigious private collections, which are infrequently, if ever, exhibited.

And a very special program—truly, a “once-in-a-lifetime” event—will take place on Thursday, May 16.  Amy Herman will conduct the amazing program she developed to help people use their sense of sight in a more enriching and beneficial way. The Art of Perception is an interactive and participatory class that will include looking at works of art in the Museum’s galleries and reporting on the experience. Strengthening our powers of observation is more important than ever before, and the Museum offers perfect opportunities for honing visual acuity by looking and seeing in more attentive ways. Ms. Herman, who has been featured in Smithsonian Magazine, on CBS television, and in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, among other news venues, has conducted her workshops with the FBI, CIA, and a wide range of civic organizations and emergency response teams. We are so pleased to be able to bring this program to our audiences, although due to its interactive format, space will be extremely limited. I encourage you to register as soon as possible.

And last but certainly not least, I want to express my sincere gratitude for the outpouring of support we are receiving as a result of recent news about the Museum’s former building. The American Folk Art Museum is alive and well on New York City’s upper west side. Artist and Visionary: William Matthew Prior Revealed and Women’s Studies remain on view through May 26, and we hope you’ll drop by for a visit soon.

Dr. Anne-Imelda Radice
Executive Director

Dear members and friends,

I am pleased to report about all things blossoming at the American Folk Art Museum this month.

Trustee Karin Fielding and her husband, Dr. Jonathan Fielding, have generously matched a grant from the Friends of Heritage Preservation, which will enable the Museum to scan, digitize, and make freely available online the full archive of The Clarion and Folk Art magazines. The funding from the Fieldings and Friends of Heritage Preservation joined the lead donation from the American Folk Art Society. Together, these grants are sufficient to make decades of irreplaceable scholarship freely available to researchers, scholars, and the general public.

The Clarion, later called Folk Art, was for more than thirty years a preeminent forum for original research and new scholarship in the encompassing field of American folk art. The Museum published 115 issues from 1971 through 2008. Reflecting the mission of the Museum, the articles featured groundbreaking research on a wide variety of topics from the eighteenth century through the present, from traditional arts such as portraiture, schoolgirl arts, painted furniture, and pottery to original perspectives on under-recognized artists whose creative expressions defy categorization. Features and articles were written by not only American Folk Art Museum curators but also by scholars and experts in many fields. The magazines were lavishly illustrated with meticulous care, and included news about the Museum as well as exhibitions around the country, illustrated advertisements from a stellar roster of dealers and auction houses, and other related information. 

I am very grateful to the Fieldings, Friends of Heritage Preservation, and the American Folk Art Society for making this ambitious and important project possible. We anticipate that the searchable online archive will launch in early 2014. We are also planning to create a boxed set of DVDs, which too will provide full searchable access to each issue.

Also, thank you to Board President Monty Blanchard and Leslie Tcheyan for their gracious hospitality: Monty and Leslie welcomed VIP visitors from the Armory Show to their home one Saturday morning a few weeks ago, and provided an invaluable collection tour for grateful participants. I had the opportunity of meeting many collectors and enthusiasts from out of town at this invitation-only event, and we made many new friends. A few weeks later, collectors and friends gathered at Trustee Audrey Heckler’s home, and there, curator Dr. Valérie Rousseau led a discussion of plans for a strong network of professionals who focus on self-taught artists, with the goal of creating a friends group for the Museum, those who might seek to more actively share scholarship and resources.

More excellent news: The Museum is to be represented at the 2013 Venice Biennale. In fact, the inspiration for this year’s international art fair is a work from the Museum’s collection, which has been on view in many of our exhibitions. The Il Enciclopedico Palazzo del Mondo (The Encyclopedic Palace of the World) is a monumental work of art; it stands 11 feet tall and occupies a footprint of 7 feet by 7 feet. This majestic creation was merely the model for an architectural structure in which all the world’s knowledge would reside. Marino Auriti (1891–1980), the self-taught artist who envisioned and built the Palazzo, was an Italian immigrant who lived in Pennsylvania, and he used wood, plastic, glass, metal, hair combs, and model kits parts to construct his edifice. It is now the centerpiece of the 2013 Venice Biennale, and we could not be happier for this worldwide recognition.

I am also happy to report that plans are underway for our October gala. Building on the success of last year’s Glitter Gala, we are planning an even more star-studded, spectacular Fall Benefit event. Please save the date: Wednesday, October 16. I will have more to say about this in upcoming messages.

Let me take this opportunity to inform you about two programs that in my view are not to be missed. The Museum, in collaboration with Reel Lives, a non-profit youth media organization based in New York City, will be presenting three documentaries, followed by discussions with the young adults who made the films. Each of the films explores the experience of immigration, and each is an autobiographical portrait—a young woman who questions the rituals and faith of Brooklyn’s Lubavitch community; a young man from the Dominican Republic who wants to pursue a career in dance despite his family’s feelings about his passion; and a young man who envisions a free Tibet, which had been the homeland of his parents. This film screening, which takes place on Thursday, April 18, from 6 to 7 pm, and which is free, is organized in celebration of the city’s tenth annual Immigrant Heritage Week, an initiative of the NYC Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs.

And May 16th—mark your calendars—a very special program will explore The Art of Perception. This participatory, interactive program is the brainchild of Amy E. Herman, who developed techniques for strengthening visual recognition and communication skills by viewing works of art. Ms. Herman has conducted this workshop across the country for a wide range of organizations, including the NYPD, the FBI, the CIA, and many hospitals, medical schools, and first-responder teams. Seating will be limited because of the interactive gallery session, so I urge you to reserve early.

As always, I hope to see you soon at the Museum.

Dr. Anne-Imelda Radice
Executive Director

Dear members and friends,

We have been happy to see so many of you over the past few weeks, at symposia, programs, and the recent art fairs. I’m also grateful to our partners and the participants who bring their expertise and enthusiasm to our audiences.

We welcomed colleagues from the Fenimore Art Museum, and others, to celebrate Artist and Visionary: William Matthew Prior Revealed with a scholarly symposium. Paul D’Ambrosio, president of the New York State Historical Association, introduced the audience to the world in which Prior painted: life in nineteenth-century New England, America before and after the Civil War, spiritual beliefs of the day, and families in pre-modern times. Carol Crown, professor of art history at the University of Memphis, spoke about prophecy art in America. And from the Museum, Stacy C. Hollander, chief curator, and Lee Kogan, curator emerita, spoke about the Prior-Hamblin school and ornamental painting, respectively. The art critic Ken Johnson, in his review of the show in the New York Times, calls it “fascinating . . . brings to light a professional artist of extraordinary versatility, resourcefulness and democratic sensibility.”

William Matthew Prior is credited with “democratizing” portraiture, in that he made such paintings available to middle-class patrons through his sliding scale of fees. His portraits tell us much about the lives of Americans of the era. Seemingly an accurate record of an individual, each Prior portrait reveals something about the sitter—his or her role or profession, perhaps an accomplishment, their economic status, or signature values, such as achieving an education or the ability to read. Prior was an abolitionist, and his many paintings of African Americans are among his most enduring and important legacies. His portrait of Nancy Lawson portrays a fashionable, educated, and well-to-do young woman; in the painting of her husband, we see this gentleman’s position as a successful and proud businessman: he wears a gold watch and watch fob and sports a cigar. The Lawson paintings are considered Prior’s masterpieces, and the artist’s evident signature (and date) on the paintings was a daring move in 1843 America. 

Prior’s portraits of children are especially riveting. Rachel Rosen, the Museum’s director of education, reports that schoolchildren are fascinated to see their forebears in these paintings. The gazes of the young faces now immortalized by Prior are open and trusting, and clues to their gender can be found in the small toys or props they hold, in the way their hair is parted, or sometimes in their clothing. Also engaging is the frequent inclusion of a family dog, who received as much of the painter’s attention as the children portrayed in these canvasses.

Other approaches to portraiture are evident in Women’s Studies, our other show currently on view. Paul D. Humphrey’s “Sleeping Beauties” hint at the many different motivations underlying the making of a portrait, as do Eugene Von Bruenchenhein’s photographs of his wife, Marie. Nellie Mae Rowe’s lush and color-saturated depictions of women are paired with Inez Nathaniel Walker’s drawings; these two artists’ works reflect the internal world rather than record their external world. Both “Artist and Visionary: William Matthew Prior” and “Women’s Studies” teach us about the many different and complex interactions between artists and their subjects. 

Our Winter Symposium on Prior coincided with the opening of the Metro Show, in late January, where we introduced ourselves to new audiences and reintroduced the Museum to many members and supporters. Ten days later, the Museum’s Uncommon Artists XXI, the annual Anne Hill Blanchard Symposium, featured cameo talks by scholars Edward Puchner (on artist Minnie Evans), Lyle Rexer (on Gayleen Aiken), Cara Zimmerman (on George Widener), and Jenny Moore (on Rosemarie Trockel). These incisive discussions were in celebration of the  Outsider Art Fair, which we co-sponsored. At the preview of the Outsider Art Fair we hit another high note with the return of our Visionary Award. It was my honor to introduce Trustee Audrey B. Heckler, who presented the award this year to Lee Kogan.

Please remember that Compass: Folk Art in Four Directions remains on view until March 31 at the South Street Seaport Museum. “Compass” is a truly remarkable exhibition. Featuring outstanding works of art from the Museum’s collection, it sheds light on the ways in which our environments shape our lives, whether natural or built. Seaport life was dominated by wind, weather, and water, and the ways in which human activity evolved there are explored through our collection.

Important works of art from the Museum’s collection are also featured in an exhibition at the Museum of Biblical Art, which explores the complex role of the Bible in the life and art of African Americans. In programming organized jointly with our neighboring institution in honor of Black History Month, my colleague Dr. Patricia C. Pongracz, acting director of MoBIA, provided a gallery tour of this exhibition earlier this month, and Lee Kogan will discuss the exhibition in an illustrated talk on February 28.

Sincerely,

Dr. Anne-Imelda Radice
Executive Director

Dear members and friends,

January brings a fresh infusion of energy and ambition for the new year, and we are experiencing that at the American Folk Art Museum! We were so pleased to be the cosponsor of A Fisherman’s Dream: Folk Art by Mario Sanchez at the South Street Seaport Museum. There, we joined New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg; New York City Cultural Affairs Commissioner Kate D. Levin; our great partner, Susan Henshaw Jones, the Director of the South Street Seaport Museum and Museum of the City of New York; and so many others (more than 800 in fact) in celebration of the triumphant reopening of the South Street Seaport Museum. Our wonderful exhibition Compass: Folk Art in Four Directions, called “a trip to visual heaven” by New York Magazine art critic Jerry Saltz, remains on view through March 31, 2013. 

More good news: Dr. Valérie Rousseau, a scholar who has worked most recently as an independent curator, has joined the staff of the American Folk Art Museum. Born in Saint-Jean-Port-Joli (Québec), Canada, Rousseau has conducted several studies and projects in the art field, both in North America and abroad, in collaboration with many organizations and museums. Please join us in welcoming her as the Curator of 20th-Century and Contemporary Art; she begins her work with the Museum (officially) on February 14.

Following on the heels of the jubilant evening at the Seaport Museum, we celebrated the opening of Artist and Visionary: William Matthew Prior Revealed and Women’s Studies at the Museum on January 22.  Feasting on artisanal, hand-crafted breads and cheeses (works of art in themselves made by Nina and Jonathan White), we welcomed colleagues from the Fenimore Art Museum, the organizer of the Prior exhibition, and our own treasured members and friends.

Prior’s portraits become all the more poignant with the knowledge that these were probably the only reminders of family members and friends in the years before photography. They invite so much curiosity. Prior, like other painters, introduced props and objects that provide information we hunger for: a favorite toy, a cherished book. The realization that the people in Prior’s portraits so strongly resemble people we know—or even ourselves—can be astonishing. But isn’t that the purpose of visiting a museum: to be amazed, to be surprised, to really open your eyes? 

More surprises can be found in “Women’s Studies.” Eugene Von Bruenchenhein’s photographs of his wife, Marie, provide perhaps the starkest contrast to Prior’s portraits.

What do they say about the collective culture of their times, and ours? Chief Curator Stacy C. Hollander gives us a view of women “from both sides now,”  literally: on opposite walls of one gallery. The Von Bruenchenhein photographs, which make voyeurs of all who view them, are accompanied by the “Sleeping Beauties” of Paul D. Humphrey. Across from these works are drawings by Nellie Mae Rowe and Inez Nathaniel Walker, colorful and often exuberant portraits with secrets of their own. The questions posed in these pictures relate to gender, identity, and self-identity. The female faces in “Women’s Studies” colorfully and powerfully contrast the Prior portraits. Seen together, the exhibitions provide provocative and rewarding perspectives on identity, portraiture, and art. We hope you’ll stop by soon.

With my best wishes for the year ahead,

Sincerely,

Dr. Anne-Imelda Radice
Executive Director

Dear members and friends,

The year 2012 is drawing quickly to a close, as is my third month with the American Folk Art Museum. Thank you for your warm welcome and support! Here is an update of our activities.

A monumental artwork in the American Folk Art Museum collection is the inspiration for the next Venice Biennale. The 55th installation of the international contemporary art exhibition, which takes place June 1–November 24, 2013, is titled “The Encyclopedic Palace” after the 1950s eleven-foot-high architectural model of the same name by Marino Auriti (1891–1980). The self-taught Italian American artist envisioned (and patented) his Encyclopedic Palace as a museum in which all worldly knowledge would be documented, preserved, and exhibited. We are thrilled to be at the center of the Biennale (anticipated attendance: 400,000) and honored by Artistic Director Massimiliano Gioni’s recognition of the Museum and all that we have to offer.

In other news on the international front, an upcoming exhibition at the Haifa Museum of Art, in Haifa, Israel, will feature major loans from our collection (January–June 2013), and the Museum is cosponsoring an exhibition of Hiroyuki Doi’s meticulous ink drawings at the Pen Station Museum at the Pilot Corporation’s headquarters, in Tokyo (October 7–December 20, 2013). These new drawings were created as a response to the devastation of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

Here in the United States, we have two traveling exhibitions of quilts from the collection on the road. Politics NOT As Usual: Quilts with Something to Say, which explores the role of quiltmaking as a medium for both art and social change, is down south at the Boca Raton Museum of Art, in Florida (through January 13, 2013). And the Figge Art Museum, in Davenport, Iowa, is presenting Quilts: Masterworks from the American Folk Art Museum (through February 3, 2013), a sampling of the best of the best, quilts that represent the finest examples in a variety of techniques, time periods, and regions.

In New York, the Museum once again played a major role at the annual Lincoln Square neighborhood Winter’s Eve event, a seasonal celebration that attracts thousands of people. The Museum Shop was responsible for the glittery, sparkly ornaments on the Christmas tree at Dante Park opposite Lincoln Center, and we were featured on prime-time television news (WABC-TV) that evening. The inspiration for this year’s ornaments was our current exhibitions Foiled: Tinsel Painting in America and Ooh, Shiny! Curator Lee Kogan can be seen giving an illuminating tour of “Foiled” on the PBS show NYC-ARTS; a catalog of the exhibition will be available later this winter.

Downtown, our sister organization the South Street Seaport Museum, which flooded during Hurricane Sandy, will re-open on December 14, and we look forward to the same robust attendance for our exhibition Compass: Folk Art in Four Directions that we saw prior to the storm. As you already know, none of our artworks were damaged; however, the Seaport Museum buildings took a blow. We are very happy to see that they will soon be up and running again, and we thank those of you who contributed to that effort. If you haven’t seen “Compass,” called “a trip to visual heaven” by New York magazine art critic Jerry Saltz, I encourage you to visit. See the exhibition soon, because it closes on February 3, 2013. 

Later this winter the American Folk Art Museum will present the exhibition Artist & Visionary: William Matthew Prior Revealed, organized by the Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, New York. Prior  (1806–1873) “democratized” portraiture by devising a sliding-scale fee structure that made such visual documents available to a broad cross-section of American society. He adjusted his painting style accordingly, offering flat portraits “without shade” for less money than fully modeled depictions. This also allowed him to compete with the growing popularity of photography that was threatening to replace the painted portrait. Prior was a fierce abolitionist, and his legacy includes a significant number of portraits of free African Americans in the pre–Civil War era. He was also deeply involved with the Adventist Movement started by prophet William Miller, who predicted the second coming of Christ in 1844; Prior painted leading members of this movement as well as Miller himself. Today, Prior is celebrated for the freshness and spontaneity of his portraits, particularly those that relied less on academic conventions. A rich history of America can be found in this fascinating exhibition, which will be on view January 24–May 26, 2013. As a companion to this show the Museum will present Women’s Studies, a selection from the collection of drawings and photographs of women by four self-taught artists from the 1940s through the late twentieth century, two male, two female. Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, Paul D. Humphrey, Nellie Mae Rowe, and Inez Nathaniel Walker offer four very different approaches that raise questions of intent, portrayal, and self-identity.

Recently I had the incredible experience of traveling across the country on behalf of the Museum. I have met with trustees, patrons, potential donors, and a number of museum directors. I am pleased to report that we have many partners moving forward. 

I will be giving a talk at the Museum on Wednesday, December 19, at 6 p.m., entitled Masterpieces—Who Says? as part of our ongoing Masterworks series, which examines art and artists in the Museum’s exhibitions and collection from multiple perspectives. I invite you to join me in the galleries.

And, if I am not able to greet you in person, on behalf of all of us at the American Folk Art Museum, I wish you a happy, healthy, and peaceful holiday season. And all best in 2013!

Sincerely,

Dr. Anne-Imelda Radice
Executive Director

Dear members and friends,

We are grateful for the concern many of you have expressed about our collection currently on view at the South Street Seaport Museum. I am happy to report that the museum’s exhibition floors sustained no damage during Hurricane Sandy. However, its various historic buildings did suffer extensive flooding, and the Seaport Museum urgently needs your financial support. If you can help with a gift in any amount, I highly encourage you to visit this page of their website. I also encourage you to visit the South Street Seaport Museum, which should reopen this week, and view our exhibition Compass: Folk Art in Four Directions, which has been extended through February 3; extra admission-fee revenue will also help our partner institution at this critical time.

New York City’s government website features numerous ways to aid various city-wide relief efforts in support of New Yorkers in need following Hurricane Sandy. If you would like to donate or volunteer, see nycservice.org. WNYC radio also has a helpful list of ways to help in New York City, Long Island, Westchester, and New Jersey on their website.

If you have artworks that sustained damage as a result of the hurricane, the Museum of Modern Art has posted guidelines for conserving flood-damaged artworks, libraries, and archives on their home page.

On behalf of the American Folk Art Museum's board of trustees and staff, I express my heartfelt concern and support for those impacted by Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath.

Sincerely,

Dr. Anne-Imelda Radice
Executive Director

Dear members and friends,

The American Folk Art Museum is the premier institution devoted to the aesthetic appreciation of traditional folk art and creative expressions of contemporary self-taught artists from the United States and abroad. The museum preserves, conserves, and interprets a comprehensive collection of the highest quality, with objects dating from the eighteenth century to the present.

The mission of the American Folk Art Museum—our task, and our passion—is to engage you in the process of looking at works of art. The American Folk Art Museum provides opportunities for you to discover not only the meaning of what you are looking at but also the power.

Many of the artists whose works are shown at the American Folk Art Museum are anonymous—unnamed, but prolific and skillful and nearly divinely inspired to make aesthetic objects: a metal box that’s more special than any other, which is why it has survived for centuries; or a coverlet for a cold night, meticulously stitched by hand to surround a loved one in the warmth of an entire family or community. The decorative tin box is meant to suggest a wonderful secret within—a prized recipe or exotic spice, a love letter or lock of hair. Its contents, at one time, were a treasure to be discovered or preserved. In so carefully trying to designate the essential role of an otherwise ordinary metal container, the hand-painted tin box became itself a work of art, a kind of masterpiece. As did the quilt, and the weathervane, the whirligig, and the hundreds of other works of art brought into being by necessity, transformed by an imaginative, or entrepreneurial, or sentimental, or especially skillful soul into an aesthetic object imbued with such fanciful or ferocious expression that it was treasured over time and preserved.

The Museum also champions—in every sense of that word—works of art made by those who found that they could not help but express themselves through visual means. The material world speaks to them, sometimes, they believe, literally; or they are compelled to bring into the world a manifestation of what they’re told, or what they see, dream, fear most, or desire. Call them “self-taught,” or “visionary,” or “outsider.” Or call it what avant-garde artist Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985) termed art brut, which encompasses many different kinds and types of objects (calligraphies, needlework, sculpture, paintings, drawings, even large-scale environments). 

But I digress. What we seek most of all is to create engagement with you, and we hope that engagement is maximal. 

I am thrilled about the opportunity to lead this Museum at this particular point in its history. Our superb collection—called by New York Times art critic Roberta Smith “one of New York City’s great treasures”—is intact, and even more: it’s on the road here and here. I am enormously grateful to the board of trustees and others who held fast to the promise of the Museum, supported the Museum, and protected its most essential assets: the outstanding works of art, the hard-working staff members, and the enthusiasm to present exhibitions, public programs, and other special events over the past many months. To the members who maintained their dedication to the Museum, and to our visitors: I look forward to meeting you.   

We have a lot of work to do. No doubt about that. Today is Day Six for me. I’ll get back to you in about a month. I will have lots to report.

Dr. Anne-Imelda Radice
Executive Director