Tag: Women Artists

Fig. 1. Appliqué bedcover by Sarah Ann Garges (c. 1834– c. 1887), Doylestown, Pennsylvania, 1853. Cotton, silk, wool, and wool embroidery, 98 by 96 inches. All objects illustrated are in the American Folk Art Museum, New York, gift of Warner Communications; photograph by Schecter Lee. The pioneering educational theorist Maria Montessori is known to have said, “It is true that we cannot make a genius.” In that vein, one of the foundational precepts of the American Folk Art Museum, the brainchild of another pioneering woman, early twentieth-century folk art collector and dealer Adele Earnest (1901–1993), is the belief that creative genius is often found among the unschooled and in unexpected places.1 The American Folk Art Museum has always been ahead of its time, championing both the historical and non-traditional work of under-represented artists. Following Earnest’s initial vision, several other women have been key to the museum’s growth and impact as an institution. From Mary Black and Barbara Johnson to Elizabeth Warren, Stacy Hollander, and now Emelie Gevalt, women curators have presented innovative exhibitions and important research to the field. In celebration of the museum’s sixtieth anniversary the sampling shown here of its holdings by women artists highlights the innate, unschooled, and often uncelebrated creative genius that has contributed so much to American visual and material culture. Fig. 2. The Apple Paring by Clementine Hunter (1886/87– 1988), Natchitoches, Louisiana, c. 1945. Oil on paper, 12 ½ by 16 inches. Gift of Mildred Hart Bailey and the Clementine Hunter Art Trust; photograph by Gavin Ashworth. Many of the works by women artists in the museum tell the stories of everyday lives. A pictorial appliqué bedcover made in 1853 by Sarah Ann Garges depicts scenes of daily work on a Pennsylvania farm (Fig. 1). Sarah tells her uplifting story of rural life through a