Folk Implosion

In good old American-Gothic kind of families, a new child was welcomed into the family with a quilt. Mom needlepointed and pillows became lively decorations when strewn about the house. A hundred years later, those same familial objects that used to adorn a home are now displayed in a museum. But are quilts, dolls, toy chests and family portraits art? Does a weathervane belong in a museum?

The Museum of Fine Arts seems to think that American Folk Art is indeed worthy of museum space with its newest attempt at a blockbuster exhibit, “American Folk,” a collection of late eighteenth to early twentieth century folk art that comprises a broadly categorized melange of everything from cabinets to hunting decoys. About a hundred and twenty years ago, the founders of the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) would have laughed at the idea of curating something so banal as what could be made by an amateur in the home, whose creation was intended not for display but for utility. The MFA, founded as a institution for the cultural elite, focused its early collection on ancient Egypt and the Middle East, Greece and Rome. Art was strictly European and American painting. Folk Art trickled into the MFA when it became an increasingly significant feature of the American art scene, thanks in part to the correlation between the Great Depression and the quest for an assertion of American values. Apparently, well-made and decorated cabinets were reminders of the Great American Way and museums adjusted the concept of high art to include pieces that served as reminders of American prosperity and independent craftsmanship.

Yet this is the first time the MFA has ever exposed its vast holdings of creative Americana to the public in one tremendous display of pamphlets, audio tours and Merrill Lynch sponsorship. Today, in the eyes of MFA’s curatorial staff, art is and can be anything.

Curated shows have run the gamut this year from Van Gogh to the Art of the Guitar to American Folk. Van Gogh got equal billing with John Lennon’s guitar. Now, an 18th century carved George Washington doll shares the same media market as Van Gogh’s “Postman.”

In this way, the MFA could be accused of market games, for chances are that an interactive guitar show or a glimpse into our forebearers living room will bring more dollars and people to the museum than a huge exhibition of Greek amphora vases. The trend at the MFA has been to make art approachable. The Monet blockbuster in 2000 did not represent a challenge for aesthetic appreciation, as one doesn’t need to understand color theory to appreciate rainbow-colored water lilies.

“The Art of The Guitar” was filled to the brim with 500-year-old guitars and lyres capitulated to a bean-bag chair music video conclusion. Like rock and roll, folk art is approachable and familiar. But a huge exhibit of objects that could be found in someone’s attic represents quite a risk.

The MFA has stepped boldly into the realm of all-inclusive art. Curators choose to place value not on the technique present in each work of art but on the objects importance as a cultural artifact. Does this redefinition mean that a slaves quilt ought to receive the same artistic consideration as a Vermeer or a Raphael? The MFA itself offers few clues. Folk art, according to the MFA, is art for the people by the people, a visual demonstration of America’s democratic values. All Americans, at least in MFA literature, can produce art. Theory aside, “American Folk” is no grand curatorial achievement. Within the space that has held Van Goghs hang quilts, family portraits and marriage contracts. American Folk should be the counterpart to an American history class, for without this background, the exhibit simply becomes a collection of tattered quilts and poorly proportioned portraits of strangers.

History makes the most sense in chronological order, but this story of American iconography has its own timeline. Grouped according to themes including Family Albums, Birds and Bees, Land and Sea, Bountiful Harvests, and God and Country, the artifacts lose their historical resonance. Lions, tigers and Greyhound carousel seats make Birds and Bees, the most enticing section of the exhibit. Farmers’ commissioned paintings of prized animals coupled with vivid imaginations prompted many renditions of oddly configured jungle beasts. Weathervanes and hunting decoys are presented as artifacts of Americana and as manifestations of the obsession with the freedom and challenges of the outdoors. The countless pots, quilts and needlepoints and furniture blend together into a fuzzy outline of American home decorating. The muddle firmly conveys that Quakers and Pennsylvania Germans made a significant contribution to the aesthetic of storage, but it’s difficult to form any desire to distinguish between the two.

With each room, the exhibit becomes more and more of a collection of repeating images: the train, the barn house, the American flag, Lincoln and Washington. Fading wooden dolls of soldiers and presidents fail to inspire, as do depictions of biblical stories in quilt form. To be valid Americana, the MFA must pull the exhibit out of its lily-white Northeastern provincialism. Harriet Powers, born a slave in Athens, Georgia, becomes the panacea. Her quilt depicts biblical scenes, natural events, and features tales of farming life. While the MFA calls the quilt extraordinary, the quilt appears to vary little from the others in the exhibit.

Red, white and blue cornfields and oceans, baskets, quilts, pots and portraits: this is America, the unprofessional artists’ legacy. The MFA certainly has a collection for and by the people, but for the price of admission, a trip to Grandma’s attic might better fill the yearning for Americana.