REAL FOLK.(Brief Article)

It's been a summer of windfalls at the American Folk Art Museum. First, in July, at the World Architecture Awards, the museum was named the best new building in the world. And then, in August, something else rather extraordinary happened, involving a popular sculpture that has stood in the entryway of the museum since its opening, last December. The "Crouching Man," an inquisitive-looking figure made of stacked wooden disks, peers out from under a staircase, catching viewers by surprise and inspiring some of them to toss coins at his feet. For years, the identity of its creator was a mystery, and, until recently, a label next to the piece read, "Not much is known about this sculpture. . . . It is believed [to have been] created by a farmer from the village of Unadilla in upstate New York around the 1940s or 1950s."

Efforts by the museum to find the artist had been unsuccessful. But in June a letter arrived from an antiques dealer near Cooperstown who claimed to have bought "Crouching Man" from its maker, some twenty years earlier. The artist, he said, was Milton Moore, a ninety-three-year-old retired farmer living in New Berlin, New York.

Brooke Davis Anderson, the director and curator of the museum's contemporary center, made several calls to Moore's home but got no response. A letter went unanswered. But finally she received a call from a woman named Pat Gifford, who said that she was a friend of Moore's. Gifford explained that she and Moore had been on a road trip to Alaska, travelling seven thousand miles in six weeks in her customized van. She took up Anderson's invitation to drive down to New York with Moore to see the sculpture.

When the two arrived, on a recent sunny morning, the entire senior staff of the museum was waiting in the lobby to greet them. Gifford walked in first. She is a short sixty-four-year-old woman with golden hair who was attached to an oxygen machine. Moore came behind her, carrying her oxygen tank in one hand and a wrinkled plastic bag in the other. He is tall and thin, and worea baseball hat, a plaid shirt, and black pants with suspenders.

"We're not used to this," Gifford said. "We're not used to this."

"You want to sit down for a little bit?" Anderson asked her.

"I need to," Gifford said. "This is some city. Last time I came down--" She tried, unsuccessfully, to catch her breath. "We're not used to this. I've never parked in a parking lot like that, where they take your car and go."