Celebrating folk art.(Current and coming)

The founding of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum dates back to 1939, when Abby Rockefeller donated part of her collection of folk art objects to Colonial Williamsburg, which her husband John D. Rockefeller Jr. had helped to create in the 1920s and where the couple had a house--Bassett Hall. In her days of collecting, Abby Rockefeller focused mainly on modern art, but like a small group of other modern art enthusiasts, including Elie Nadelman, Edith Halpert, and Holger Cahill, she was also drawn to the patterns, designs, and colors used by American folk craftsmen and self-taught artists.

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Besides Colonial Williamsburg, the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, both in New York City, also received portions of Rockefeller's folk art collection. In 1957, nine years after her death, these three collections were brought together at Colonial Williamsburg by her son David and installed in a new building, the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Collection (later Center), which was established with the support of her husband. Encompassing some 424 folk art objects at the time, the collection has grown to more than 5,000.

In 2004 a new home for this pioneering collection was begun to both bring it closer to the center of Colonial Williamsburg for easier public access and to create more flexible, lighter, and welcoming spaces in which to view the objects. Located in what was the garden of the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum, the new Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum opened last month. Containing eleven galleries of varying sizes, it was designed by Samuel Anderson Architects of New York City. Thanks to its proximity to the DeWitt Wallace Museum, they can share ...