The New York Times’ Roberta Smith has issued an impassioned cry to save the Folk Art Museum. As the critic tells it, a litany of failures have occurred, ranging from investing in a building no one wanted to enter to last year’s hiring of Director Maria Ann Conelli, a woman who had never headed a museum before and knew little of folk art.
Hopefully this story plays out differently than it did for The Jersey City Museum. Similarly crushed by renovation costs and a board that appointed the inexperienced Laurene Buckley as its head, the museum was forced to shut down. Its holdings are now a victim of bank foreclosure.
In the case of the Folk Art Museum, the Times reports that the board is looking to sell off its collection to either the Smithsonian Institution, the Brooklyn Museum, or some combination of the two. Let’s hope this doesn’t happen, as the Folk Art Museum housed some great curators and continually produced great shows. One such example was this year’s Infinite Variety quilt show at the Park Avenue Armory which offered a stunning array of red and white quilts, but also, earlier exhibitions showcasing the work of such great artists as Henry Darger and Adolf Wölfli. Darger was actually described in 2008 by artnet’s Ben Davis as a little too influential on contemporary artists. “The problem” he writes “is contemporary artists cannibalizingDarger's work for themes or miming his stylistic tics cannot hope tolive up to the lyrical strangeness of the original.”
Needless to say, the Folk Art Museum’s woes are not good news.
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They should do an Antiques Roadshow where the entire museum collection is appraised (w/treasure chest graphic & attendant sound-effect and all).
The Folk Art Museum has an impressive collection, but the build doesn’t reflect the art that it exhibits. Though I find the build an eye sore, it still houses a high caliber of artistic expressive artworks. NYC needs a museum like the Folk Art Museum. Maybe MoMA should make this museum an extension of there collection. MoMA has included “folk/outsider art in their group exhibition in the past. Redesign the facade. Stripe it down to a Shaker like simplicity. If the Folk Art Museum was to become an extension of MOMA, NYC would benefit greatly. The history of Modern art has always had a relationship with the “outsider/folk artist” from Henri Rousseau to Jean Dubuffet to Henry Darger. It makes perfect logical sense to make the Folk Art Museum as an extension of MoMA. They did it with PS1. Ann Temkin is such an amazing curator. The Folk Museum would florish with Ann Temkin insight and artistic integrity. Through Temkin’s brilliance the general public would get an opportunity to connect to a different side of art making.
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