On view July 2 through September 19, 2016 at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
Featuring more than 100 artworks, including quilts, paintings furniture, sculpture, weathervanes, works on paper, and more from the renowned collection of the American Folk Art Museum in New York City, this exhibition examines the role artworks like these have played in shaping the visual image and national identity of the United States. This is the first presentation of American folk art at Crystal Bridges.
The early American republic was a nation of makers. With an exuberance that was fueled by revolutionary fervor and enlightenment philosophy, the lives of Americans were filled with objects and artworks made by their own hands. Created before the establishment of museums of art, folk art—as these expressions are known today—was widely enjoyed and considered as a natural part of the “furniture of a house.” The application of artistic intent to forms of everyday life was also a reflection of the practical nature of young America, whose citizens commissioned portraits and embellished purely functional objects.
The art and artists were themselves part of a story that was unfolding, but as these artworks were made, used and enjoyed outside of museums, the public record of them has largely been lost. The slow recovery of these histories was facilitated by two unlikely forces that aligned in the early years of the twentieth century: the colonial revival, a movement to recover a legitimate American heritage; and Modernism, a desire on the part of the avant-garde to find a specifically American precedent for their own art.
