NEW YORK, NY.- The American folk art collected by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller—one of the three founders of MoMA, with Lillie P. Bliss and Mary Quinn Sullivan—was integral to the Museum’s early history, when folk art was positioned as an important antecedent to modernism. Works from Rockefeller’s collection were shown in the 1932 exhibition American Folk Art: The Art of the Common Man in America, 1750–1900, and several examples entered the Museum’s holdings in 1939 as a gift in celebration of MoMA’s 10th anniversary. Following the Museum’s 2024 presentation of Lillie P. Bliss: Birth of the Modern, this exhibition showcases some 50 objects from Rockefeller’s collection (now held by the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, one of the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg), including celebrated paintings such as Edward Hicks’s The Peaceable Kingdom (1832–34).

Artdaily Recommended · Paid Link

American Folk Art

Revisiting the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Collection

A richly illustrated volume exploring American folk art through one of the field’s most important collections, assembled by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller.

See it on Amazon →

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

A range of objects, both decorative and functional, made by craftspeople and other individuals who had not received formal artistic training are also being featured, from painted portraits and illustrated birth certificates to weathervanes, wooden toys, theorem paintings, and mourning pictures. These works are being presented in dialogue with selected paintings and sculptures in MoMA’s collection by modern artists who were inspired by or championed American folk art, including Elie Nadelman and Charles Sheeler, and by artists like John Kane and William Edmondson, who represent the ongoing relevance of self-taught artistic practices in the early 20th century. The exhibition is accompanied by a 72-page, fully illustrated catalogue celebrating the collection.





American Folk Art: Revisiting the Collection of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller is curated by Starr Figura, Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, and Lydia Mullin, Manager, Collection Galleries, Department of Curatorial Affairs, with Rachel Rosin, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Drawings and Prints; and with the collaboration of The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.