{"id":7190,"date":"2018-04-10T07:54:37","date_gmt":"2018-04-10T11:54:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7190"},"modified":"2018-04-24T07:15:49","modified_gmt":"2018-04-24T11:15:49","slug":"icymi-american-folk-art-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7190","title":{"rendered":"ICYMI: American Folk Art Museum"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AmericanThe free American Folk Art Museum<\/a> at 2 Lincoln Square, shares its modestly sized space with the Manhattan temple of the Church of Latter Day Saints, across from Lincoln Center on Columbus Avenue at 66th Street. This location is one of the Museum\u2019s two outposts. The other, in Long Island City, displays items from the permanent collection, whereas the Manhattan space has \u00a0rotating exhibitions.<\/p>\n

When we visited recently, the exhibit was a fascinating display of \u201cself-taught\u201d art, along with the artists\u2019 written commentaries about their work. Twenty-one artists from the United States and numerous other countries are represented, and the exhibition will be on display until May 27.<\/p>\n

What the works have in common, over space and time, is the intensity and focus of the artistic vision applied. Many of the artists struggled with mental illness and art may have been a way of coping with and an expression of their challenges. Collectively, the exhibition catalog says, the artists through both their works and what they say about them demonstrate the \u201cidiosyncratic structure of their lifelong, intricate, and nonlinear narratives.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first set of pencil drawings we examined, by artist James Edward Deeds, Jr. (1908-1987), was mounted so you could see both sides of the paper on which his drawings of steamboats, horse-drawn carts, and circus wagons were created. The paper on which they were created was unused forms from the state mental institution where he lived for 37 years. A few years after Deeds\u2019s death, a curious teenager rescued the artist\u2019s 283 drawings from the trash.<\/p>\n

I was drawn to a display of more than a hundred 8 x 10-inch topographical drawings and paintings fitted together like a map\u2014\u201cJourney to Another Dimension\u201d (photo below)\u2014by Michigan artist Jerry Gretzinger<\/a>, The full set of almost 3500 of these panels could cover the floor of a basketball court and has been shown in its entirety only once (on the floor of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art). A fascinating video shows Gretzinger talking about his elaborate, random process for revising individual panels, which allows for organic change in the set.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a group of 80-year-old drawings of children by Henry Darger (one is featured on the Museum website) that at first look playful until you read the captions; Spanish artist Josep Baqu\u00e9<\/a>\u2019s fantastical creatures; and a pattern on paper that looks like dots. The museum conveniently offers a powerful magnifying glass to let you see the dots are very, very teensy words.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s fair to say that all the works were intriguing, some even startling, but perhaps not as much as the inspired minds behind them. I hope to go back regularly to see what this museum is up to! A fantastic gift shop, BTW.<\/p>\n

\"Gretzinger

photo: Nicholas Helmholdt<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The free American Folk Art Museum at 2 Lincoln Square, shares its modestly sized space with the Manhattan temple of the Church of Latter Day Saints, across from Lincoln Center on Columbus Avenue at 66th Street. This location is one … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"ICYMI: American Folk Art Museum - a small museum, big in concept.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,104,78],"tags":[166,898,91],"class_list":["post-7190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-imagination","category-the-morgue","category-travel","tag-creativity","tag-museum","tag-new-york"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1RY","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7190"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7193,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7190\/revisions\/7193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}