Monday, May 23, 2011

MoMA to buy American Folk Art Museum next door -- posted by Florida Fine Art


New York NY, MoMA to buy American Folk Art Museum next door.

Sad day for this wonderful museum.  Another casualty of the great art recession that continues to affect art organizations everywhere.  The question might be why categorize certain art as folk anyway, is it not also modern?  Is an artist's work created in southern Alabama judged not as worthy as an artist's work created in SoHo?  Why limit these artists in "Folk"?  Is "Folk art" a code or cop-out for the institutional accepted norm that big city art is somehow superior?  Are Purvis Young and Thorton Dail not also abstract expressionists, every bit as modern as De Kooning?  Is Howard Finster's work not every bit the equal to Jasper Johns?  Maybe its time to acknowledge that just because an artist is from the South, usually black and unschooled, that does not mean that they cannot produce work which is important to our national dialog. GL

Article about the Museum closing.

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