: Patriotic Motifs in American Folk Art
- What is more American than apple pie?
Eagles, flags and Lady Liberty, judging by the dozens of
patriotic motifs that crop up on quilts and fire buckets, trade
signs and weathervanes in a new book and a related exhibit at the
Fenimore Art Museum.
"Folk art with patriotic themes and familiar patriotic icons is
the most popular form of American folk art," says Deborah
Harding,author of Stars and Stripes: Patriotic Motifs in
American Folk Art."The people who made these objects came to
America from all over the world to celebrate their freedom.
Despite their different origins, they were united by a mutual
pride of country in a new land."
The unifying power of these uplifting images is explored in
"American Memory: Recalling the Past in Folk Art," through
December 29 at the Fenimore Art Museum, which displays the New
York State Historical Association's (NYSHA) varied collections of
fine art, folk art and North American Indian art in 11 permanent
and changing galleries. The exhibition considers the notion of
collective memory and contrasts it with the ways in which folk
artists represent individual experience.
"Folk art served to create an identity for the United States at a
time when that identity, indeed the survival of the United
States, was not a forgone conclusion," says Paul S. D'Ambrosio,
NYSHA's chief curator.
The museum's interest in folk art as a tangible representation of
the American spirit dates to the late 1940s, when former director
Louis C. Jones and the museum's late benefactor Stephen C. Clark
sought the best examples of such work.
