American Folk Art: Revisiting the Collection of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller

The American folk art collected by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller—one of the three founders of MoMA, with Lillie P. Bliss and Mary Quinn Sullivan—was integral to the Museum's early history, when folk art was positioned as an important antecedent to modernism. Works from Rockefeller's collection were shown in the 1932 exhibition American Folk Art: The Art of the Common Man in America, 1750–1900, and several examples entered the Museum's holdings in 1939 as a gift in celebration of MoMA's 10th anniversary. Following the Museum's 2024 presentation of Lillie P. Bliss: Birth of the Modern, this exhibition will showcase some 50 objects from Rockefeller's collection (now held by the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, one of the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg), including celebrated paintings such as Edward Hicks's The Peaceable Kingdom (1832–34). A range of objects, both decorative and functional, made by craftspeople and other individuals who had not received formal artistic training will also be featured, from painted portraits and illustrated birth certificates to weathervanes, wooden toys, theorem paintings, and mourning pictures. These works will be presented in dialogue with selected paintings and sculptures in MoMA's collection by modern artists who were inspired by or championed American folk art, including Elie Nadelman and Charles Sheeler, and by artists like John Kane and William Edmonson, who represent the ongoing relevance of self-taught artistic practices in the early 20th century. The exhibition will be accompanied by a 72-page, fully illustrated catalogue celebrating the collection.

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