American Folk Art Museum Marks 65 Years

May 6 Gala in New York City Affirms AFAM’s Legacy as the Nation’s Home for Folk and Self-Taught Art

Tony Award Winner and Quilter Harvey Fierstein; Contemporary Self-Taught Artist vanessa german; and Folk Art Scholar, Curator, and Collector Elizabeth V. Warren to Be Honored

NEW YORK, March 23, 2026 — On May 6, 2026, the American Folk Art Museum will mark its 65th anniversary—along with the 250th anniversary of the United States—with a gala at the Mandarin Oriental New York. The event will gather artists, patrons, collectors, and supporters of folk and self-taught art to recognize the Museum’s legacy and provide support for its future.

The evening will also honor a vibrant slate of visionaries, including contemporary self-taught artist vanessa german; Broadway icon and talented quilter Harvey Fierstein; and Elizabeth V. Warren, folk art scholar, curator, collector, and outgoing Board President, for her forty-plus years of transformative leadership of the Museum.

“This is a monumental year for the American Folk Art Museum, and it is profoundly fitting to celebrate our anniversary in tandem with the country’s semiquincentennial,” said Jason T. Busch, Becky and Bob Alexander Director & CEO. “For 65 years, this museum has served as the nation’s preeminent home for folk and self-taught artists, safeguarding their vital contributions to the American narrative. We are delighted to recognize vanessa, Harvey, and my dear friend Liz as our honorees. These three individuals have a passion, creativity, and dedication to our mission that is deeply inspiring.”

The gala will follow the early April openings of two exhibitions—Self-Made: A Century of Inventing Artists and Folk Nation: Crafting Patriotism in the United States—which highlight the very heart of the Museum’s collection.

Ticket purchases provide essential support for these exhibitions, as well as the upcoming fall presentation Locating Girlhood: Place and Identity in Early American “Schoolgirl” Art, its related public programs, and the Museum’s core operations. This generosity also sustains our commitment to free admission for more than 60,000 annual visitors and extends our reach to hundreds of thousands more through robust online programming. Tickets for the gala are available now via the Museum’s website.

HONORING A VIBRANT SLATE OF VISIONARIES

(Works by vanessa german. Images courtesy of the artist and Olney Gleason, New York.)

vanessa german is a leading citizen artist working in sculpture, performance, and communal ritual to cultivate spiritual models for transforming human experience. Establishing her own self-taught approach and a distinctive artistic language, german’s influential practice employs mineral crystals, beads, glass, found objects, and other sourced material to create expressive figurative sculptures that resound through the physical and metaphysical worlds. Her unique sculptural vocabulary transmits healing energy, affirming the power of love as an infinite human technology.

german will receive the Museum’s Audrey B. Heckler Visionary Award. Established in 2008, the award honors an individual, institution, or project that has made a unique and distinctive contribution to the field of self-taught and vernacular art. The Visionary Award was chaired by AFAM’s late Trustee Heckler and sponsored by the Foundation to Promote Self-Taught Art. In 2024, the Award was renamed in recognition of her longstanding commitment to the Museum as well as her legacy as a visionary leader and champion of artists. Recent recipients of the Award include artist Otis Houston Jr.; Tom di Maria, Director of Creative Growth Art Center; Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art; Rebecca Alban Hoffberger, Founder of the American Visionary Art Museum; and The Souls Grown Deep Foundation.

“My Soul sings in and through the process of creating. It is the great love of my existence and it keeps me. To have this spirit of creative wonder, universal connection and deep love celebrated by the American Folk Art Museum is a joy. I believe this visionary award honors every human being who reaches into the well of their heart, into the hearth of their own Soul to move with creative urgency, activating intentionally and intuitively their own powers of love and transformation. This is the great visionary gift of being human—we have imaginations, free-will, and hearts to guide us forth. My art is a tribute to this miraculous spirit of infinite possibility,” said german.

(Quilts by Harvey Fierstein. Images courtesy of the artist.)

Best known for his groundbreaking work in theater and film, Harvey Fierstein is also an accomplished and deeply committed quiltmaker. Fierstein creates vibrant, densely pieced quilts that draw on traditional American patchwork patterns while embracing bold color, theatrical flair, and personal storytelling. His works honor the lineage of American quiltmaking even as they reflect his singular voice, blending technical precision with warmth, wit, and a performer’s eye for drama. A longtime friend of the Museum, he has generously supported past galas by contributing his distinctive handmade quilts to auction.

Fierstein was the recipient of the 2025 Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement. He is the Tony Award-winning author of Torch Song Trilogy and La Cage Aux Folles. His other theater writing includes Kinky Boots (Tony-nominated), Newsies (Tony-nominated), Casa Valentina (Tony-nominated), A Catered Affair (12 Drama Desk nominations), Safe Sex, Spookhouse, and Legs Diamond, among others. His rewrite of the classic musical Funny Girl was produced in London’s West End, on Broadway, and on tour in North America. He wrote the teleplays of Hairspray Live! and The Wiz Live!, both for NBC. For HBO he’s written On Tidy Endings (ACE Award), The Sissy Duckling (Humanitas Award), and Common Ground. He’s written political editorials for The New York Times, Huffington Post, TV Guide, and PBS, as well as authoring the beloved children’s book The Sissy Duckling.

“The American Folk Art Museum collects the very soul of our nation. Fine art, no matter how groundbreaking, can be influenced by movements and artists from all over the world. It is studied and considered. It is created from the outside looking in. Folk art, on the other hand, is the outward reaching manifestation of a singular human’s inner world. Uncontainable. Folk artists create because they must. The purity of those expressions, unstudied and naive, identify us and document how we exist in the world. As much as I love all art, my heart belongs to the folk and outsider art community. That is why I am so blown away by AFAM’s request to honor me in this way. I blush at the very thought that I can help support this completely necessary organization and its work,” said Fierstein.

Elizabeth V. Warren has served on the Board of Trustees of AFAM since 2007, and was elected President in 2019. Previously, she was a curator at the Museum from 1984 until 1991, and subsequently a consulting and guest curator. Warren has organized a number of critically acclaimed exhibitions for the Museum, many of which have been accompanied by books, including Infinite Variety: Three Centuries of Red and White Quilts (2011), The Perfect Game: America Looks at Baseball (2003–2004), and Made in New York City: The Business of Folk Art (2019). She is also a member and past President of the American Folk Art Society. After graduating with an AB from Bryn Mawr College, where Warren is currently a Trustee Emerita, she was a journalist at House Beautiful covering the home furnishings market as well as art and antiques. She received her MA from New York University in Folk Art Studies.

“From my earliest days as curator to my tenure as Board President, it has been my connection to the art (and particularly traditional American folk art in all its many forms) that inspires me. It’s a visceral reaction, not one that can be easily defined, but it leads to the desire to know more—more about the subject, the artist, the environment in which the art was created, and the history of the object over time. I have never been inspired to make art, but my creative side is satisfied by the study of those who–without an art school education—are able to bring beauty and joy into the world. This museum has enabled me to maintain and build on that connection for many, many years,” said Warren.

THE AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM’S LEGACY

Since 1961, AFAM has celebrated the creativity of individuals whose singular talents were refined through personal experience rather than formal training. Its collection now includes more than seven thousand works spanning four centuries and nearly every continent—from compelling portraits and dazzling quilts to powerful works by contemporary artists across a variety of mediums. Through critically acclaimed exhibitions, scholarly publications, and robust community outreach, the Museum serves as the leading forum for shaping the appreciation of folk and self-taught art across time and place.

AFAM advocates for those who have historically been sidelined from mainstream art history, platforming individuals who turned to artistic creation out of resourcefulness, necessity, and a drive for survival. The resulting body of work is invigorating—at times raw, at others refined, but always candid and genuine. What began in modest circumstances—a gallery carved from a second-story parlor above a Manhattan deli—has grown into an ambitious institution that highlights artists who have lived and worked within the United States, as well as those whose creative ideas have emerged from across the globe.

Over the last 65 years, the Museum has organized hundreds of groundbreaking exhibitions drawn from its burgeoning collection and strategic loans. Recent highlights include An Ecology of Quilts: The Natural History of American Textiles (2025–26), Madalena Santos Reinbolt: A Head Full of Planets (2025), Unnamed Figures: Black Presence and Absence in the Early American North (2023–24), Morris Hirshfield Rediscovered (2022–23), American Weathervanes: The Art of the Winds (2021–22), and PHOTO | BRUT: Collection Bruno Decharme & Compagnie (2021). Each of these projects represents the most comprehensive study of its subject to date, and many have traveled to institutions nationwide.

The Museum continues to evolve, refreshing its exhibitions approximately every six months. Currently, AFAM is focused on elevating the visitor experience through the most ambitious renovation of its galleries in two decades. Admission to the Museum remains free to all, ensuring that this vital cultural resource stays accessible to the widest possible audience.

In March 2026, AFAM was recognized by the New York State Assembly for all its accomplishments.

GALA SUPPORT

The American Folk Art Museum extends its sincere gratitude to the Gala Co-Chairs and members of the Host Committee for their generous support.

Co-Chairs: Bob and Becky Alexander; Susan Baerwald and Marcy Carsey – Just Folk; Edward Blanchard and Leslie Tcheyan; Evert and Ashley Christiansen; Barbara and Ben Z. Cohen; Chris Giglio and Larry Curran; Lucy and Michael Danziger; Laura Parsons; Donna and Marvin Schwartz; Rachel and Donald Strauber; and Elizabeth V. and Irwin Warren.

Host Committee:Penny Bellamy; Stephanie Bernheim; Barbara Block; Ellen Brooks; Marc and Laurie Brown; Barbara L. Gordon and W. Stephen Cannon; Lybra Clemons and Laurent Delly; Mary Anne Costello; Paul S. and Anna T. D’Ambrosio; Karin and Jonathan Fielding; Barbara and Thomas Israel; Franny Koelsch Jeffries and John Jeffries; Penny and Allan Katz; Lucia Keller/Bonnie Cashin Fund; Jason T. Busch and Duane G. Middendorf; Nancy Kollisch and Jeff Pressman; Renata A. Ferrari and Brett A. Robbins; Robert and Cynthia Schaffner; Jean Shafiroff; Jane and Barton Shallot; and Roberta and Ralph Terkowitz.