:Colonial Williamsburg will display a striking selection of
outdoor folk art beginning next year, from a trade sign
resembling an oversized pair of spectacles and a colorful
tobacconist clown to an enormous wooden watermelon and a
weathervane in the form of Lady Liberty in "Outside In: Folk Art
for the American Landscape."
The exhibition, which will offer more than 40 objects that
illustrate the artistic side of early American al fresco
decoration, will be at the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum,
February 5 through June 2006, while the new Abby Aldrich
Rockefeller Folk Art Museum is under construction in 2005-06.
Long before the invention of neon, American cities and villages
were filled with colorful signs and painted sculptures.
Eye-catching shop signs and trade figures identified products and
services to entice customers into individual businesses. In
addition to its commercial appeal, sculpture also adorned
churches, schools, houses, barns and public buildings.
At the top of most of these edifices perched a weathervane in the
form of an angel, a quill, a sheep or a rooster. These examples
of "public sculpture" not only showed which way the wind blew but
also indicated the owners' occupations or the kinds of activities
carried on within the buildings.
"After the widespread use of electrified neon signs began in the
1930s, sculptural architectural decoration fell from fashion and
much of the visual appeal of the built environment was lost,"
said Jan Gilliam, Colonial Williamsburg's manager of exhibition
planning. "Weathervanes, painted signs and sculpture provided
variety, beauty and interest to the landscape. Today, they are
reminders of a time when visual surprises might be found on any
street, around any corner or on the very tops of buildings - when
whimsy and imagination were considered essential ingredients of
daily life."
The Wallace Museum is open daily, 11 am to 5 pm, from January
to March. The new Folk Art Museum, which will be adjacent to the
Wallace Museum, will open in October 2006 with 11 exciting new
displays of folk art from the Colonial Williamsburg
collection.Admission to the Museums of Colonial Williamsburg is
included in any multiday admission ticket or by one-day or annual
museums ticket. For program information, 757-220-7724.
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