American Folk Art Museum

by Celia Sin-Tien Cheng
March 11, 2009

The American Folk Art Museum is one of my favorite museums in the City. It’s small compared to the colossal MoMA next door, but the exhibits are well curated and always a pleasure.

There are three special exhibits that I particularly enjoyed on a recent visit:

MARTIN RAMIREZ: THE LAST WORKS
October 7, 2008 – April 12, 2009

THE SEDUCTION OF LIGHT: AMMI PHILLIPS | MARK ROTHKO COMPOSITIONS IN PINK, GREEN, AND RED
October 7, 2008 – March 29, 2009

UP CLOSE: HENRY DARGER
October 7, 2008 – September 2009

I’m a fan of both self-taught outsider artists Henry Darger and Martin Ramirez, and I continue to return to the museum to study their works. There was a 2007 retrospective on Ramirez, and the museum is home to the single largest public repository of works by Darger.

The above photo of Ramirez’s partial “UNTITLED (Trains and Tunnels)” is most representative of his trains and tunnels motif. I love his bold and expressive lines that are abstract but defining.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that Mark Rothko (1903 – 1970) is one of my favorite artists, given my obsession with color. “The Seduction of Light” is an interesting thesis through which to juxtapose works by Phillips (1788 – 1865). I’m used to seeing Rothko’s large canvases next to his modern contemporaries, not the portraits of Philips from the 1800’s. I can spend hours in front of any Rothko absorbing both the tranquility and the dissonance of his colors and their interaction.

Henry Darger is probably the most famous outsider artist, and deservedly so. He created 300 watercolors to illustrate his 15,000-page manuscript The Story of the Vivian Girls, in what is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion.

Don’t miss these wonderful, yet small and manageable exhibits at the American Folk Art Museum. They are inspiring breaks that motivate me to work harder.

Collection of American Folk Art Museum, New York
Promised Gift of the Family of Dr. Max Dunievitz and the Estate of Martin Ramirez
© The Estate of Martin Ramirez

photo credit: Ellen McDermott