Current | Folk Art USA: Coast To Coast

In 1976, the Brooklyn Museum hosted Folk Sculpture USA, a seminal exhibit curated by the legendary collector Herbert Hemphill that coincided with America's bicentennial. With America now at 250, Powers / Lowenfels presents Folk Art USA: Coast to Coast.

Hemphill's curation for Folk Sculpture USA was deeply personal, and as Hilton Kramer wrote in the New York Times: "[The exhibit] is the art in folk art, rather than its folkloric sentiments." We took the same approach; it's not a show of just masterpieces but a wide range of compelling carvings and paintings from sea to shining sea. Folk Art hooked rugs from New England, Woodlands Indian carvings, idiosyncratic southern sculpture by Leroy Person, James Son Ford Thomas, and George Ohr, to engaging works from the Midwest and the West Coast, with Sanford Darling, John Roeder, and an important cement sculpture found in Los Angeles of a figure for a WWII Victory Garden figure, possibly by the visionary, Sam Rodia.

America has always had a diverse chorus. Eclectic timbres and collective consonance add texture—harmonies are formed by many voices. E pluribus unum, "out of many, one," is an American ethos. United we stand, divided we fall. Patriotism is not nationalism. Immigrants such as Israel Lutwik took great pride in becoming Americans.

In honor of the semiquincentennial, we have a remarkable WWII Folk Art carving of the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima, the aforementioned WWII Victory Garden Figure, and a standout Stars and Stripes painted revivalist preacher’s cross and case which ironically echoes the warnings of fascism, “wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."

In addition to our summer exhibit, also in NYC, The American Folk Art has Folk Nation: Crafting Patriotism in the United States, MOMA is exhibiting American Folk Art from founding member Abby Aldrich, and the Met has, Revolution! (Works relating to the Revolutionary War).