Art
Diving into the American Folk Art Museum’s two new exhibitions, it’s quite likely that your head will spin — for all the right reasons — in the presence of some very potent expressions from two unsinkable human spirits.
Art
This list barely scratches the surface of the city's artistic offerings this year, from overdue retrospectives to surprising sides of artists we know well.
Art
The 19th century saw the rise of the posthumous portrait when, through photographs and paintings, people preserved the faces of departed loved ones.
Art
Ronald Lockett believed in magic. So said sculptor Kevin Sampson during a talk in July at the American Folk Art Museum.
Books
What is more titillating — knowing that someone is guarding a delicious secret you might never be invited to share, or being charged with protecting some precious confidence of your own?
Art
A strange visual language developed from the 18th to the 20th century behind the closed doors of American secret societies.
Art
What if canonical art history had been written not by academics but by art’s makers themselves? Who would have been included in such a history, and who would have been left out?
Art
The first United States exhibition of Dutch artist Willem van Genk’s work at the American Folk Art Museum offers a comic counterpoint to the recent Futurist show at the Guggenheim.
Art
In 1964, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously noted, with regard to what exactly constituted “obscenity,” “I know it when I see it.” Similarly, among some art historians, collectors and other experts, just what can or should be considered “folk art” often has been a subject of criteria-ques
News
With scaffolding now shrouding its embattled façade, the architects behind the ill-fated American Folk Art Museum (AFAM) have broken their silence over the demolition of the acclaimed building, denouncing the "senseless and unnecessary act of destruction" in a brief statement posted online yesterday
News
Saving face is no longer limited to disgraced public figures — architects and their patrons can also get in on the action. The New York Times is reporting that the Museum of Modern Art intends to preserve the metal panels that make up the façade of the American Folk Art Museum building.
Art
If the howlings this week surrounding the fate of the American Folk Art Museum building are any indication, a low-stakes outrage has gripped the culture pages of virtually every newspaper and magazine in America.