Word: exhibition
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...Museum of Fine Arts seems to think that American Folk Art is indeed worthy of museum space with its newest attempt at a blockbuster exhibit, “American Folk,” a collection of late eighteenth to early twentieth century folk art that comprises a broadly categorized melange of everything from cabinets to hunting decoys. About a hundred and twenty years ago, the founders of the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) would have laughed at the idea of curating something so banal as what could be made by an amateur in the home, whose creation was intended...
...Guitar” was filled to the brim with 500-year-old guitars and lyres capitulated to a bean-bag chair music video conclusion. Like rock and roll, folk art is approachable and familiar. But a huge exhibit of objects that could be found in someone’s attic represents quite a risk...
...literature, can produce art. Theory aside, “American Folk” is no grand curatorial achievement. Within the space that has held Van Goghs hang quilts, family portraits and marriage contracts. American Folk should be the counterpart to an American history class, for without this background, the exhibit simply becomes a collection of tattered quilts and poorly proportioned portraits of strangers...
...story of American iconography has its own timeline. Grouped according to themes including Family Albums, Birds and Bees, Land and Sea, Bountiful Harvests, and God and Country, the artifacts lose their historical resonance. Lions, tigers and Greyhound carousel seats make Birds and Bees, the most enticing section of the exhibit. Farmers’ commissioned paintings of prized animals coupled with vivid imaginations prompted many renditions of oddly configured jungle beasts. Weathervanes and hunting decoys are presented as artifacts of Americana and as manifestations of the obsession with the freedom and challenges of the outdoors. The countless pots, quilts and needlepoints...
With each room, the exhibit becomes more and more of a collection of repeating images: the train, the barn house, the American flag, Lincoln and Washington. Fading wooden dolls of soldiers and presidents fail to inspire, as do depictions of biblical stories in quilt form. To be valid Americana, the MFA must pull the exhibit out of its lily-white Northeastern provincialism. Harriet Powers, born a slave in Athens, Georgia, becomes the panacea. Her quilt depicts biblical scenes, natural events, and features tales of farming life. While the MFA calls the quilt extraordinary, the quilt appears to vary little from...