Folks; a new home for unsung artists.(American Folk Art Museum, New York, New York)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 14-JAN-02

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COPYRIGHT 2002 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

The new American Folk Art Museum, on West Fifty-third Street, is a pleasure machine, and its two inaugural exhibitions are strong delights. One, entitled "American Radiance," is a collection of more than four hundred objects given to the museum by Ralph Esmerian, the chairman of AFAM's board; the other is a selection of works from the museum's voluminous cache of visual and written material by the Chicago recluse Henry Darger. The Esmerian collection is an epic poem of connoisseurship. Darger was one of the singular artists of the twentieth century. Taken together, the building and the shows make for lively philosophical trouble. Each word in AFAM's name -- "American," "folk," "art," and "museum" -- acquires fresh, wobbly spin. Formerly called the Museum of American Folk Art, this reborn institution challenges conventional thinking about whirligigs and needlepoint samplers, among other artifacts, and a mad Chicagoan's midnight lucubrations.

Designed by the New York firm of Tod Williams Billie Tsien, the skinny building's lobby and four gallery floors are dominated by service facilities. Stairways, a balconied atrium, and the elevator housing occupy space that might appear absurdly disproportionate to the nooks and corridors that are left over for exhibits. But the elaborately accommodating, modestly palatial arrangement whets a viewer's powers...

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