American Folk Art Museum

The American Folk Art Museum in New York City is the most important museum of Naive Art in the United States.

History

The museum was opened in midtown Manhattan in 1963 and is located after numerous parades since 2001 in 45 West 53rd Street, near the Museum of Modern Art

Initially, the museum was still called the Museum of Early American Folk Arts and dealt mainly with American Naive art from the 18th and 19th centuries. The renamed Museum of American Folk Art, and again in American Folk Art Museum, already hinted at an extension of the self-understanding of the museum. The name refers to the location and therefore the main focus of the museum, but the American Folk Art can only be understood in an international context of naive art.

Over time the collection has been extended to African-American and Latino art. Since 1998, the Contemporary Center of the museum exclusively Naïve art of the 20th and 21st centuries, and accumulated breeding species in European style. A larger collection of works of the artist Henry Darger is the basis of the Henry Darger Study Center.

In 2007, part of a 20 million dollar donation from the Carnegie Corporation, the museum.

Collection

Among the best known works in the collection belongs to the first department Flag Gate, an American flag made ​​of wood and metal, approx 1876. Was also in the early years Archangel Gabriel and St. Tammany Weathervane Weathervane, Weather vanes made of the 19th century. With the purchase of the Bird of Paradise Quilt Top (1858-1863) quilts were an important part of the collection. Special mention deserves the collaborative quilt project to commemorate 9 / 11th

Prior to the inauguration of the new museum building in 2001, the museum has received numerous donations, including artifacts from the Pennsylvania German and Shaker.

The permanent exhibition is called " Folk Art Revealed ".

Fate of the new building

The new building of the museum in 2001, was designed by New York architects Tod Williams Billie Tsien couple. It is located in the immediate vicinity of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA ) that the property had already in 2011 the suffering from lack of money museum bought. In the spring of 2014, will be demolished and replaced by Neubautens the MOMA.