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An Ecology of Quilts: The Natural History of American Textiles

September 26, 2025–March 1, 2026

An Ecology of Quilts: The Natural History of American Textiles brings together approximately 30 examples, spanning the 18th to 20th centuries, from the Museum’s rich collection of more than 600 quilts and presents them from an ecological perspective, tracing patterns of relationships between the environment and traditional quilting practices.

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Upcoming Exhibition
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Untitled (Blue Construction, Figures, and Bottles; or Two Men Reaching for Bottles), 1939–1942

Bill Traylor (1853–1949)

Self-Made: A Century of Inventing Artists

April 10, 2026–September 13, 2026

Self-Made: A Century of Inventing Artists provides an innovative focus on artistic self-representations of the twentieth century as well as contemporary works, addressing for the first time how formally untrained artists have identified, imagined, and depicted themselves as “capital-A Artists.”

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Upcoming Exhibition
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Self-Made: A Century of Inventing Artists; Situation of America, 1848

Folk Nation: Crafting Patriotism in the United States

April 10, 2026–TBA

Mounted during the celebration of the United States semiquincentennial, Folk Nation: Crafting Patriotism in the United States draws from the American Folk Art Museum’s rich collections to explore links between vernacular art and the construction of an American sense of self.

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Upcoming Exhibition
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Sampler, c. 1789

Ruthy Rogers

Locating Girlhood: Place and Identity in Early American “Schoolgirl” Art

October 8, 2026–February 28, 2027

Featuring spectacular examples of needlework and other ornamental arts made by American girls in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Locating Girlhood: Place and Identity in Early American “Schoolgirl” Art sheds new light on a rich but understudied genre, offering one of the most significant presentations on the subject in recent memory.

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Madalena Santos Reinbolt: A Head Full of Planets

February 12, 2025–May 25, 2025

Curator: Curated by Valérie Rousseau and Dylan Blau Edelstein

Somewhere to Roost

February 12, 2025–May 1, 2025

Curator: Brooke Wyatt

Anything but Simple: Gift Drawings and the Shaker Aesthetic

September 13, 2024–January 26, 2025

Curator: Emelie Gevalt and Austin Losada

Playing with Design: Gameboards, Art and Culture

September 13, 2024–January 26, 2025

Curator: Emelie Gevalt and Austin Losada

Tosquelles

April 12, 2024–August 18, 2024

Curator: Joana Masó, Carles Guerra, Valérie Rousseau, and Edward Dioguardi

Unnamed Figures

November 15, 2023–March 24, 2024

Curator: Emelie Gevalt, RL Watson, and Sadé Ayorinde

Marvels of My Own Inventiveness

November 15, 2023–March 24, 2024

Curator: Brooke Wyatt and Sadé Ayorinde

What That Quilt Knows About Me

March 17, 2023–October 29, 2023

Curator: Emelie Gevalt and Sadé Ayorinde

Material Witness: Folk and Self-Taught Artists at Work

March 17, 2023–October 29, 2023

Curator: Brooke Wyatt

Morris Hirshfield Rediscovered

September 23, 2022–January 29, 2023

Curator: Richard Meyer and Valérie Rousseau

MULTITUDES

January 21, 2022–September 5, 2022

Curator: Valérie Rousseau and Emelie Gevalt

Pushing Boundaries

January 21, 2022–January 29, 2023

Curator: Emelie Gevalt and Valérie Rousseau

American Weathervanes: The Art of the Winds

June 23, 2021–January 2, 2022

Curator: Guest Curator: Bob Shaw and Emelie Gevalt

PHOTO | BRUT: Collection Bruno Decharme & Compagnie

January 24, 2021–June 6, 2021

Curator: Curators: Valérie Rousseau, PhD, Senior Curator, and Bruno Decharme in collaboration with Barbara Safarova, Sam Stourdzé, and Paula Aisember

American Perspectives: Stories from the American Folk Art Museum Collection

February 11, 2020–January 3, 2021

Curator: Stacy C. Hollander

Six Decades Collecting Self-Taught Art

August 26, 2019–January 3, 2021

Curator: Dr. Valerie Rousseau and Stacy C. Hollander

Memory Palaces: Inside the Collection of Audrey B. Heckler

September 17, 2019–January 26, 2020

Curator: Valérie Rousseau

A Piece of Yourself: Gift Giving in Self-Taught Art

July 22, 2019 –January 10, 2020

Curator: Steffi Ibis Duarte

WALL POWER! Quilts from the Werner and Karen Gundersheimer Gift

August 6, 2019–September 1, 2019

Curator: Stacy C. Hollander

Made in New York City: The Business of Folk Art

March 15, 2019–July 28, 2019

Curator: Elizabeth V. Warren