AFA 20th Anniversary

20th Anniversary 104 www.afamag.com | www.incollect.com Fig. 13: Artist unidentified, Memorial: Gate of Heaven, possibly Maine, ca. 1850. Paint on wood, 12⅝ x 29½ x 3⅜ in. Collection of American Folk Art Museum, New York; Gift of Jacqueline Loewe Fowler (2019.9.3). Fig. 14: Artist unidentified, Barbershop Stand and Shelf, ca. 1940-1950. Courtesy, High Museum. No less interested in expanding its holdings in the work of women, African-American and artists from around the globe is the Baltimore Museum of Art . Last year the museum sold off from its permanent collection a number of works by major modern artists, including a Rauschenberg and a Warhol, in order to raise money to acquire works by women artists and artists of color. Among the artworks purchased from the proceeds of recent deaccessioned works is a drawing by David Driskell, a mixed media piece by Faith Ringgold, and a 1995 oil on canvas work by Mary Lovelace O’Neal, Running Freed More Slaves Than Lincoln Ever Did (Fig. 10)—a l l A f ric an-Americ an artists—in addition to pieces by Jamaican-born mixed-media artist Ebony G. Patterson ( ...we lost... for those who bear/bare witness, 2018), Cuban-born multimedia artist Ana Mendieta ( Blood Inside Outside , 1975), and Rumanian a r tist Geta Brătescu ( Mother Courage , 1966). The works of women artists have also been on the wish list of various museums, such as the Monterey Museum of Art , which acquired two pieces by feminist artist Judy Chicago, the 1962–64 acrylic on stoneware, In My Mother’s House, and the 1962–64 acrylic on Masonite, Emblem . Both pieces explore female empowerment. Looking back a bit in time, the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, was gifted a 1787 painting Still Life with Mackerel by Anne Vallayer- Coster (1744–1818) (Fig. 11). Both the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Boston and Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas acquired works by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama (Fig. 12). who, like Kehinde Wiley, has recently jumped to the top of every museum director’s bucket list. Kusama has created twenty or so installations, called “Infinity Rooms.” The ICA’s room is called Love is Calling (2013), while the Crystal Bridge’s is My Heart is Dancing Into the Universe (2018). American folk art remains a focus of many museums, primary among them the American Folk Art Museum in New York. AFAM acquired an unusual carved memorial that employs motifs more commonly seen in 19th-century needlework or painted mourning pictures (Fig. 13). The elements of landscape and architectural detail show t he inf luence of t he rura l cemeter y movement, which, in keeping with the era’s culture of sentimentality, promoted bucolic, romantic surroundings for sites of mourning. Using crowd sourcing to decide which of four