AFA Summer 2021

A s a result of the pandemic, instead of a much-anticipated walking trip in Japan last spring I found myself on a glorious journey of discovery exploring the records of the American Folk Art Gallery, an epicenter of New York City’s early twentieth-century art scene. 1 Not only did I find new material to consider, but the experience has also given me a much greater understanding of how folk art came to be considered emblematic of our national spirit and why so many of the artists carried by this gallery are represented in our public institutions. The f irst metropolitan galler y in the country to make a business of marketing folk art, from the outset, the gallery promoted folk art as deserving of critical attention for its formal qualities. Begun as a joint venture between gallery owner Edith Gregor Halpert (born Russia, 1900–1970) and folk art scholar Holger Cahill (born Iceland, 1887–1960), when the gallery first opened in 1931, it occupied the second floor of Halpert’s Downtown Gallery in Greenwich Village, Manhattan (Fig. 1). Halpert and Cahill first met in Ogunquit, Maine, in the 1920s, where they observed visiting artists using folk art to furnish the fish shanties they were occupying. An alliance between the two seemed promising. Halpert wanted to expand the market for contemporary art, and Cahill, an early proponent of the dynamic relationship between folk art and contemporary art, provided Halpert with the ideology and the contacts to make it possible. Combining the two kinds of inventory on the same premises was so successful that folk art remained an integral part of Halpert’s business until its closure in 1973 (Figs. 2, 2a). Instead of emphasizing the historical associations or utilitarian value of folk art as was customary, the gallery presented folk art as American art from an earlier time. Their first exhibit, American Ancestors, in 1931 included work in a variety of media. The title was not a reference to ancestral portraits, but to ancestors of American contemporary art. The gallery marketed all genres, provided the work had sufficient aesthetic appeal (Figs. 3, 3a) (Figs. 4, 4a). Antiques & Fine Art 63 2021 Fig. 1: Downtown Gallery, 113 West 13th Street, NYC, ca. 1939. Note the sculpture on display in the windows on the second floor. Courtesy Municipal Archives, City of New York; image identified as “Block 609 lot 52 ‘Downtown Gallery.’” Fig. 2: American Folk Art Gallery advertisement, not dated. Downtown Gallery records 1824–1974, bulk 1926–1969. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Reel 5642, frame 1008. Carefully chosen paintings like the one in this gallery advertisement underscored the idea that folk art was an authentic expression of the spirit of the country. Fig. 2a: Unknown artist, Buffalo Hunter, 1844. Oil on canvas, 40 x 51¼ inches. Santa Barbara Museum of Art; Gift of Harriet Cowles Hammett Graham in memory of Buell Hammett (1945.1).