Exhibition

At the Self-Taught Genius Gallery
Long Island City, Queens

Gifts are present at all of life’s great milestones: births, birthdays, weddings, and all of the little occasions in between. A Piece of Yourself: Gift Giving in Self-Taught Art is dedicated to exploring the interconnection between gift-giving practices in the United States and self-taught art through a selection of works from the museum’s collection. Self-taught art—an inherent expression of its maker’s views—complicates standard gift-giving dynamics by presenting a one-of-a-kind artwork instead of an everyday commodity.

Made between the late eighteenth and twenty-first centuries, the works on view speak of their self-taught origins through their immediate and personal nature. They show that, at its best, giving a work of art is giving a piece of yourself.

Exhibition curator: Steffi Ibis Duarte, assistant curator, Self-Taught Genius Gallery

Installation photos by Olya Vysotskaya

Exhibition-Related Programs

Midday Art Break

Address:
47-29 32nd Place
Long Island City, NY 11101

Map (click to enlarge):

Subway: 7 train to 33rd Street, walk 2 blocks
Bus: Q32, Q39, Q60

Images: Mary Antoinette Lorania Pike and Sarah Adeline Pike; Joseph H. Davis (1811–1865); New Hampshire; 1865; watercolor, pencil, and ink on paper; 8 1/2 x 11 in.; Collection American Folk Art Museum, New York, gift of Ralph Esmerian, 2005.8.8. Photo © 2000 John Bigelow Taylor.

Cotton Pickin’; Clementine Hunter (1886/87–1988); Natchitoches, Louisiana; 1948; oil on artist board; 16 x 20 in.; Collection American Folk Art Museum, New York, gift of Gleaves Rhodes, 2001.27.1. Photo by Gavin Ashworth.

Surprise Quilt Presented to Mary A. Grow; various quiltmakers; Plymouth, Michigan; 1856; cotton with ink and embroidery; 87 x 82 1/2 in.; Collection American Folk Art Museum, New York, gift in memory of Margaret Trautwein Stoddard and her daughter, Eleanor Stoddard Seibold, 2003.2.1. Photo by Gavin Ashworth.

Heart-and-Hand Love Token; artist unidentified; possibly Connecticut; 1840–1860; ink and varnish on cut paper; 12 x 14 in.; Collection American Folk Art Museum, New York, museum purchase, 1981.12.15. Photo by John Parnell.

Ark of the Covenant; Minnie Evans (1892–1987); Wilmington, North Carolina; 1980; crayon, pencil, and gold paint on card; 13 x 17 7/8 in.; Collection American Folk Art Museum, New York, gift of the artist, 1982.2.1.

Love Token for Sarah Newlin; artist unidentified; Southern Chester County, Pennsylvania; 1799; ink and watercolor on paper; 12 5/8 x 12 5/8 in.; Collection American Folk Art Museum, New York, gift of J. Randall Plummer and Harvey S. Shipley Miller, 2007.24.1A. Photo by John Parnell.