Folk Art Museum Celebrates 50 Years Of Unconventional Works

By: Stephanie Simon

To view our videos, you need to
enable JavaScript. Learn how.
install Adobe Flash 9 or above. Install now.

Then come back here and refresh the page.

The American Folk Art Museum in Lincoln Square is celebrating its first half century with a special exhibit that's a dream come true for art lovers. NY1's Stephanie Simon filed the following report.

Step right up to the American Folk Art Museum and into the fantasy of Coney Island, as envisioned by New York artist Ralph Fasanella.

"You have all these people leaving the grittiness of the city funneling through this tiny little cash-only entry but it's not going to the sand side of the beach. It's actually funneling directly into the ocean. And you have to cross the ocean to get to the sand," explains American Folk Art Museum Senior Curator Stacy Hollander.

The painting is on view as part of the museum's 50th anniversary celebration. The exhibit, conceived by Hollander, is called "Jubilation Rumination. Life: Real and Imagined."

"I was interested in that permeability between what's real, what's not real, what's imaginary, what's concrete," says Hollander.

To celebrate, I wanted to do NY1's "Weather on the Ones" forecast, but it would be in vain because unfortunately a figured weathervane that's currently part of the exhibit is missing her directionals: You don't know if she's pointing north, south, east or west but it's still an important work of art.

"We do consider them major examples of American sculpture," says Hollander. "But they were functional. They were put on tops of buildings, so that especially in the 18th and 19th century when there were so many itinerant and agrarian occupations people could forecast the weather."

As for the winds of fortune, the museum is back to just one location on West 66th Street after selling its 53rd Street building to the Museum of Modern Art last summer. Board President Monty Blanchard says that solved the museum's money troubles so that it can focus entirely on its mission.

"All these works represent art that is produced by people outside the traditional art school or accepted mainstream art world," says Blanchard.

One more reason to celebrate: Admission to the museum is free.

For more information, visit www.folkartmuseum.org.