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Six Decades Collecting Self-Taught Art: Revealing a Diverse and Rich Artistic Narrative

November 11, 2020–January 2, 2022
Exhibition

The inaugural exhibition in the Audrey B. Heckler Gallery conveys the museum’s deep commitment to studying, preserving, and sharing the complexity, ingenuity, and historical relevance of self-taught art across time, cultures, and place. This snapshot of the Museum’s collection shows how habits and changes in daily life, culture, and technology can provoke artistic responses and practices and includes masterworks by Martín Ramírez, Barbus Müller (a.k.a. Antoine Rabany), and Achilles B. Rizzoli, all recently donated to the museum by its esteemed Trustee, Audrey B. Heckler.


Reserve ticketsafamtickets.eventbrite.com. Admission is always free.


Exhibition curators: Emelie Gevalt and Valérie Rousseau

 

Artworks

Achilles G. Rizzoli (1896–1981, United States); Mother Symbolically Represented/The Kathredal; November 11, 1936; ink on rag paper; 27 3/4 x 47 5/8 in.; American Folk Art Museum, New York, gift of Audrey B. Heckler. Photography © Visko Hatfield, from The Hidden Art (Rizzoli Electa, 2017).

Barbus Müller, a.k.a. Antoine Rabany (1844–1919, France); untitled; c. 1907–1919; granite; 16 x 9 x 8 in.; American Folk Art Museum, New York, gift of Audrey B. Heckler. Photography © Visko Hatfield.

Melvin Way (b. 1954, New York City); Untitled (“FleSsSh”); c. 2000; ballpoint pen on paper with Scotch tape; 1 1/4 × 2 1/8 in.’; Gift of Jacqueline Loewe Fowler, 2016.15.1; Photo Credit: Adam Reich⁠

Minnie Evans (1892–1987); Untitled, Wilmington, North Carolina, United States, 1959; oil on canvas with collage;⁠2 0 × 24 in. Gift of Jacqueline Loewe Fowler, 2018.19.24⁠; Photo Credit: Gavin Ashworth⁠⠀⁠⠀
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Henry Folsom (1792–1814); Young Woman of the Folsom Family (possibly Anna Gilman Folsom). Exeter, New Hampshire or Boston, Massachusetts, c.1812–1814. Oil on canvas. American Folk Art Museum, Gift of Ralph Esmerian, 2005.8.3.

David Kulp (1777–1834), Presentation Fraktur of a Double Eagle.Bucks County, Pennsylvania. c.1815. Watercolor and ink on paper. American Folk Art Museum, gift of Ralph Esmerian, 2005.8.40.

Credits

Audrey B. Heckler has been a devoted trustee of the American Folk Art Museum since 2003. She has enriched the museum through loans for exhibitions, gifts to the collection, and financial support of the museum’s initiatives. In honor of her generous contributions and steadfast support, the museum proudly named a permanent gallery in her honor in 2020.

Reviews
The show includes important works by seminal artists of the genre like Martín Ramírez, Barbus Müller and the late Black artist Minnie Evans..."
– Gabriella Angeleti
The American Folk Art Museum Just Landed One of the Most Important Collections of Self-Taught Art in Private Hands—See It Here
– Sarah Cascone
Trove donated by collector Audrey B. Heckler includes examples of European Art Brut and works by African-American artists
– Nancy Kenney