Doranna and Bruce Wendel, gameboard collectors extraordinaire and the couple of the hour, whose gift to the American Folk Art Museum is the subject of the museum’s latest exhibition, “Playing with Design: Gameboards, Art and Culture.”
Event coverage and Photos by Madelia Hickman Ring
NEW YORK CITY — The American Folk Art Museum (AFAM) elevated the concept of game night on Thursday, September 12, when it hosted several dozen people to an opening night party to inaugurate the museum’s newest exhibition, “Playing with Design: Gameboards, Art and Culture.” The exhibition celebrated more than 100 gameboards and related photographs given earlier in 2024 to AFAM by Doranna and Bruce Wendel of Connecticut. The first museum exhibition dedicated to gameboards in nearly 20 years, it is the second time the museum has hosted the Wendels’ collection; “Winning Moves: Painted Gameboards of North America,” which ran at the AFAM in the mid-1980s, featured boards from their collection as well as those from others.
The event kicked off AFAM’s fall exhibition series. In addition to “Playing with Design” was “Anything but Simple: Gift Drawings and the Shaker Aesthetic,” an exhibition that originated at Hancock Shaker Village. Objects in the exhibition — which were hung in the central lobby and entryway were from Hancock Shaker Village and photographs from the New York State Museum, as well as those from public and private collections that supplemented the museum’s holdings. The Cowin gallery housed “Somewhere to Roost,” which featured more than 60 works of paintings, textiles, photographs and sculptures that explored the ways artists evoke and construct ideas of “home.”
All of these exhibitions will remain on view until January 26.
Some of the museum staff and family present were, from left, Jason T. Busch, Kate Johnson, Johnson’s husband, Kevin Dresser, Karley Klopfenstein, Derek Parsons and Judy Steinberg.
Many of the museum’s long-time supporters and folk art power players were on hand for the evening’s festivities, including Olde Hope’s Pat Bell, Sotheby’s Nancy Druckman, Vera Jelinek, Irwin and Elizabeth V. Warren, Joyce Cowin, Ralph and Roberta “Bobbi” Terkowitz, Jeff Pressman and Nancy Kollisch and The American Art Show director, Catherine Sweeney Singer.
Warren, president of the museum’s Board of Trustees, introduced Jason T. Busch, the Becky and Bob Aleander director and CEO of the American Folk Art Museum. In his remarks, Busch mentioned the scaffolding that now graces the museum’s façade at Lincoln Center, noting renovations would begin in the summer of 2025. Forthcoming changes include updated mechanical systems throughout the gallery, new bathrooms, new office space for AFAM employees, a redesigned gift shop and a new “dynamic façade” of the building, which is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The museum is not expected to close during this time.
The museum’s upcoming gala fundraiser — inspired by the Wendels’ gameboard collection — is titled “Casino Night” and will take place on October 25.
In 2026, the museum will turn 65 and plans are afoot for events to celebrate that milestone, in addition to those focused on the national Semiquincentennial. Details about these will be forthcoming as they evolve.
The American Folk Art Museum is at 2 Lincoln Square. For information, 212-595-9533 or www.folkartmuseum.org.
