The First Decade, 1961–1971
The museum’s first decade was a time of multiple beginnings, as its founders—Arthur M. Bullowa, Adele Earnest, Cordelia Hamilton, Herbert W. Hemphill Jr., Marian Willard Johnson, and Joseph B. Martinson—sought to give shape and structure to a shared vision. For them, folk art was a vital element in American cultural history, and it warranted the establishment of an institution in the city of New York devoted to its collection, exhibition, and interpretation.
When the Board of Regents of the New York State Education Department granted a provisional charter on June 23, 1961, the prospects for acquiring a home or a collection for the Museum of Early American Folk Arts, as the new organization was initially called, were uncertain at best. The choice of New York City, then acknowledged as the art capital of the world, was significant in itself. The very idea that folk art could be studied and appreciated as art, rather than as material culture or historical or ethnographic artifact, was a by-product of the growth of modernism as a movement in the history of American culture.
The museum began to build a collection almost immediately after it was established. Bert Hemphill presented the now famous Flag Gate as a gift in 1962. The museum’s initial accession, this piece remains among the most celebrated works of art in the permanent collection. Adele Earnest contributed the Archangel Gabriel Weathervane the following year. Featured as the cover image on the catalog of the institution’s first exhibition, which was on view in the gallery of the Time and Life Building in October and November of 1962, the weathervane served as a well-loved symbol of the museum for many years.
During its first decade, other gifts also came to the museum, along with one major purchase: the monumental, 9-foot-tall St. Tammany Weathervane, perhaps the country’s largest. With a handful of exceptions, the institution’s earliest acquisitions were three-dimensional objects. The museum soon established a reputation for the visual strength and aesthetic importance of sculpture in its permanent collection, a reputation that was enhanced in 1969 by Alastair B. Martin’s gift of 140 outstanding wildfowl decoys. Its other holdings were, relatively speaking, minor.
The museum opened its galleries to the public for the first time on September 27, 1963, in the rented parlor floor of a town house at 49 West 53rd Street. George Montgomery, who had organized traveling exhibitions for the Museum of Modern Art, was appointed the museum’s first director in 1963, a post he held only until 1964. For the most part, the institution’s approach to the collection and exhibition of American folk art was grounded in the fine arts, following—but extending—the model of curator Holger Cahill, whose groundbreaking exhibitions at the Newark Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in the 1920s and 1930s helped establish the field. The exhibition program of the first decade was ambitious. Although the museum’s emphasis, as might be expected, was on the nineteenth century and the Northeast, the institution staked out a national and even international purview for itself almost from the beginning.
Although it consistently received excellent reviews for its exhibitions, many of which were truly pioneering in scope, subject matter, and scholarship, the institution’s goal of financial stability remained elusive. Even so, the museum continued to present provocative and engaging exhibitions—including the wide-ranging and influential “Twentieth-Century American Folk Art and Artists” in 1970, which explicitly took a broader view of the field than that originally articulated by the organization’s founders. In this and other exhibitions, the museum argued against the notion that the creation of folk art was a thing of the past. 
The new museum established a reputation for its innovative programming and fidelity to mission. Its success in fulfilling its objectives was recognized by the Board of Regents in 1966, when it awarded a permanent charter to the institution under the name Museum of American Folk Art. Nevertheless, the decade ended in doubt and even despair. Due to financial difficulties, the Board of Trustees considered closing the institution’s doors forever in 1971.
The Second Decade, 1971–1981
If there were few reasons to celebrate the beginning of the museum’s second decade, there were at least several reasons for encouragement. A grant from the National Endowment for the Arts funded a series of exhibitions that helped sustain the museum’s reputation as an innovator and drew more visitors than any of the exhibitions held during the institution’s first decade. The museum also received a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts; this funded the planning and organization of a series of Bicentennial exhibitions on the folk arts of New York State.
Wallace E. Whipple, director from 1971 to 1972, explained that the many encouraging developments masked a more serious reality, and the financial strain on the institution was intense. Consideration was given to the sale of the museum’s collection at auction. This was a controversial proposal; ultimately, the museum retained ownership of the most important works of art in its collection. The brief but brilliant directorship of Bruce Johnson (1975–1976) helped bring a renewed sense of purpose to the organization. Shows presented during his tenure broke all attendance records. The museum also produced a series of illustrated catalogs and books during this period. The momentum that Johnson inspired continued beyond his tragic death in a motorcycle accident at the age of twenty-seven.
One of the museum’s new trustees of that time was Ralph Esmerian, a young collector whose name appears in museum records for the first time in 1973. Esmerian entered an uncertain institutional environment with the conviction that the institution not only would survive but, if properly nurtured, would build a national center in New York for the study and appreciation of American folk art. He served as treasurer until 1977, as president from 1977 to 1999; and chairman from 1999 to 2005.
In 1977, the museum’s Board of Trustees appointed Robert Bishop director. Bishop was a talented promoter who took a broad, inclusive view of folk art. A prodigious author in the fields of the American folk and decorative arts, Bishop placed great emphasis on the museum’s publication program. The summer 1977 issue of The Clarion was no longer a newsletter; in addition to providing a glimpse of the museum and its programming, it featured topical essays on a variety of aspects of American folk art. It would soon be recognized as an important resource for the study of the subject and help boost membership in the museum.
In order to encourage gifts to the museum, Bishop set an example by promising works of art from his own collection. In 1978, one year after he arrived at the museum, Bishop boldly published “A Guide to the Permanent Collection” in the midsummer issue of The Clarion. Many of the objects illustrated in the article were his own promised gifts; others were the gifts or promised gifts of his friends and associates, including Trustee Cyril I. Nelson. For the first time since its founding, the museum now held a collection of quilts and other textiles, and this collection would soon become one of its greatest strengths. Also, the collection now included paintings and sculpture by twentieth-century self-taught artists. Another successful initiative of Bishop’s early years was the establishment of the museum’s volunteer docent program in 1978. Lucy Cullman Danziger, now a vice president of the museum’s Board of Trustees, initially served as a founding docent and as docent cochair.
In 1979, several trustees came together to purchase the famous Bird of Paradise Quilt Top for the museum. This acquisition represented a turning point: the art of quiltmaking would become a major emphasis in the collection and programs of the institution. Another major acquisition was David Pottinger’s gift in late 1980 of his comprehensive collection of midwestern Amish quilts. During the same year, the Museum received Effie Thixton Arthur’s bequest of her large collection of chalkware figures. Most celebrated of the accessions during this period was a highly significant promised gift, the collection of figural sculpture assembled over many years by Dorothea and Leo Rabkin. Although it still had a long way to go, the museum was clearly building a permanent collection of true substance and depth.
Because of the inadequate size and facilities of its rented gallery, the museum sought to move into a home of its own almost from its earliest days as an institution. In 1979—through an introduction from Maureen Taylor, a trustee of the museum, and her husband, Richard, a former trustee, and the interest of Blanchette Rockefeller—the museum was able to purchase from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund two adjoining town houses at 45-47 West 53rd Street, formerly a residence for actresses called the Rehearsal Club. This purchase would prove to be one of the single most significant events in the history of the institution.
Although the buildings were in poor condition and thus could not be used, they provided the basis for future development. Through the generosity of Ralph Esmerian, the principal contributor of funds toward this purchase, and other thoughtful members of the Board, the museum could now look forward to a home of its own. If the second decade began in doubt and uncertainty, it ended on a very high note, indeed.
The Third Decade, 1981–1991
When Gerard C. Wertkin joined the staff of the museum as assistant director in late 1980, it became clear that the building project was the principal order of the day. The museum began to devise plans for development on West 53rd Street, an effort that dominated its third decade. These plans were complicated by a series of zoning, tenant, and legal issues that absorbed the time and attention of the museum’s board and administration. To be sure, the museum continued to organize a full and varied schedule of exhibitions and educational programs. In 1981 the museum established a graduate program in folk art studies in conjunction with New York University, the first of its kind in the nation. The Folk Art Institute, an accredited program leading to a certificate in folk art studies, was initiated in 1985. The decade also witnessed impressive growth in the permanent collection, but the development of the museum’s future home took precedence over everything else.
The museum presented its exhibitions at 49 West 53rd Street until 1984, when it opened handsome new facilities nearby in a former jazz museum and Rockefeller carriage house at 125 West 55th Street. This was a temporary move, an optimistic response to affirmative developments in the building program, intended in part to permit the properties on 53rd Street to be prepared for demolition. Under the terms of the lease covering the 55th Street galleries, the museum was required to vacate in 1986 (the building was subsequently razed).
Without galleries of its own for almost four years, the institution organized a remarkable series of exhibitions and educational programs by utilizing public spaces and corporate galleries and forming partnerships with other museums. In addition, the museum strengthened and extended its traveling exhibition program to institutions throughout the country. As of the end of the museum’s fourth decade, its exhibitions had been presented in no fewer than 150 museums and other venues in the United States and abroad, representing both a major public service and a professional affirmation of the merit of the museum’s programming.
While negotiations on the future of the museum’s properties on 53rd Street continued, the museum undertook the creation of branch exhibition facilities at Two Lincoln Square in Manhattan, on the ground floor of a multi-use building opposite Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Occupied under a tripartite agreement with the owner of the premises and the City of New York, this former “public arcade” provided more expansive exhibition space than either of the institution’s prior galleries. It opened to great fanfare in 1989. Named for the renovation’s principal contributor and her late husband, the Eva and Morris Feld Gallery at Lincoln Square has supported a broad-based public program since it was opened.
Throughout the 1980s, the permanent collection continued to grow. In 1980, Bishop and Wertkin began a series of talks with Jean and Howard Lipman for the purchase of their collection of American folk art. As a result, the museum accessioned thirty-nine key works and sold the remainder at auction to fund the purchase. Headlines were made in 1984, when the museum acquired Ammi Phillips’s great masterpiece, Girl in Red Dress with Cat and Dog. Among other significant accessions during the museum’s third decade, Elizabeth Ross Johnson contributed a group of twentieth-century paintings and sculpture in 1985. The same year, Animal Carnival, Inc., through Trustee Elizabeth Wecter, transferred a collection of animal sculptures. Martin and Enid Packer’s collection of tenth-anniversary tin arrived in 1988, and in 1989 Margot Paul Ernst gave her woven coverlet collection in memory of Susan B. Ernst. That same year, an encyclopedic gathering of painted tinware and other objects, the gift of the Historical Society of Early American Decoration, also came to the institution.
The expected development of a multi-use building on six lots—upon which so much energy was expended during the decade—did not occur. The project had to be scuttled. That fact, and Bishop’s increasingly serious illness, cast a shadow over the end of the museum’s third decade. The museum’s thirtieth anniversary passed with little notice.
The Fourth Decade, 1991–2001
Robert Bishop died on September 22, 1991, and was deeply mourned by a wide circle of friends and professional associates. After serving as acting director during Bishop’s illness, Gerard C. Wertkin was appointed director of the museum in December of that year. His goals as director included a renewed focus on the building program, greater diversity in exhibitions and collections, more sustained use of the permanent collection, and a concentration on new scholarship. The board and staff entered a period of long-range planning and self-study to help prepare for the realization of these objectives.
Over the course of the first thirty years of its history, the museum’s programming was remarkably diverse—indeed, by its very nature the folk art field is multicultural —but diversity became even more of an emphasis in the 1990s. Major presentations of works by African American and Latino artists became a regular feature of the museum’s exhibition schedule and permanent collection. In 1991, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts funded the purchase of an important collection of contemporary African American quilts.
In 1993 the museum rededicated the south wing of the Eva and Morris Feld Gallery at Lincoln Square as the Daniel Cowin Permanent Collection Gallery, so named in memory of a deeply respected trustee. In 1998 the museum established The Contemporary Center, a division of the institution devoted entirely to the collection and exhibition of the paintings, sculpture, and installations of twentieth- and now twenty-first century self-taught artists. Its formation prompted the gifts to the museum of important works by twentieth-century self-taught artists from M. Anne Hill and Edward Vermont Blanchard, Sam and Betsey Farber, and David Davies. In 2001, The Contemporary Center announced the acquisition, by purchase and by gift, of twenty-four works by the great Chicago artist Henry Darger, as well as a huge archive of Darger’s manuscript books, tracings, drawings, and source materials.
Although the Eva and Morris Feld Gallery greatly improved its capacity to serve the public in the 1990s, the museum persisted in its efforts to create a permanent home and determined to develop a new building on the lots at 45 and 47 West 53rd Street. The museum’s trustees commissioned the internationally recognized architectural team of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects LLP to design a 30,000-square-foot structure on the two lots, and they announced the commencement of a $34.5 million Capital Campaign to underwrite the costs of construction and the establishment of an endowment.
Known initially as the Museum of Early American Folk Arts, the institution adopted a more inclusive name in 1966; as the Museum of American Folk Art, it established a reputation for examining virtually every aspect of the folk arts in America. In 2001 the museum chose its new name, the American Folk Art Museum, as an expression of a further extension of mission. In anticipation of the opening of the museum’s new home, many thoughtful donors gave or promised highly important objects in virtually every medium for the permanent collection. Indeed, the growth of the permanent collection was a striking feature of the 1990s. The most significant gift comprises more than four hundred works of art representing the heart of Ralph Esmerian’s folk art collection.
Founding trustee Adele Earnest struck a millennial note in the concluding paragraph of her 1984 book Folk Art in America. Although she herself did not live to see the realization of her dream, she fully anticipated its fulfillment. “When I climb the hill near my home in Stony Point,” she wrote, “I will look straight down the Hudson River, thirty miles to New York City where our [museum] shall stand. On that triumphant day, our Angel Gabriel will blow his horn, loud and clear, in honor of all who have served our cause, and especially for those who have served and passed through the pearly gates. Blow! Gabriel! Blow!”
Largely adapted from “The Museum at Forty: Four Decades of Achievement,” by Gerard C. Wertkin, director emeritus, published in Folk Art 26, no. 2 (summer 2001)