Exhibition Texts
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EXHIBITION TEXTS Return after Use This booklet is published in association with the exhibition American Perspectives: Stories from the American Folk Art Museum Collection, presented February 11–May 31, 2020, at the American Folk Art Museum, New York. All texts are by Stacy C. Hollander, exhibition curator, unless otherwise indicated. Share Your Story folkartmuseum.org/Perspectives.html AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM 2 Lincoln Square New York, NY 10023 www.folkartmuseum.org Edited by Cindy Trickel Designed by Kate Johnson Copyright © 2020 American Folk Art Museum, New York. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the museum. This exhibition is supported in part by Art Bridges, the David Davies and Jack Weeden Fund for Exhibitions, the Richard C. von Hess Foundation, the Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds Foundation, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the Stacy C. Hollander Fund for Exhibitions, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and the Council for Traditional Folk Art. America is a nation of stories. Each life is a series of experiences; they make Everyone has a story to tell—a life lived as a us who we are. witness to and participant in events both These become the stories that we use to invoke private and shared. The stories that we tell as truths, assert authenticity, and appeal to our individuals are single strands in a grander better natures through the precious values narrative. Together, they build a consensus of the deep culture that we share. The artworks around the principles of a nation, maintaining a in this exhibition are organized into four delicate balance between the one and the many, sections: Founders, Travelers, Philosophers, and the fulfillment of self and being better and Seekers. They remind us that there are citizens. The exhibition American Perspectives beginnings, dreams, achievements, and disap- captures the power of storytelling through pointments, and that many of the issues that artworks that express the dualities of artist and trouble us today—anti-immigration, political subject to reveal a simple truth: As much as we turmoil, economic uncertainty, and loss of like to mythologize, America is not monolithic; personal liberties—were also concerns in the the ideal and the reality diverge. The artists in past. They remind us that there is loneliness this exhibition have led vastly different lives, but and heartbreak, but also family and love. They they are all united as Americans. In this era of hold in common the truths that act as the unremitting uniformity and conventionalizing ballast against which we judge our actions, our through mass means of commercialization, successes or failures, our power or impotence. communication, transportation, technology, and Their stories lend coherence to our own experi- media, it is the very diversity of experience, ence. In this, the art functions as testifier to heritage, perspective, and place that revitalizes, and revision of the choices that we, and others, renews, and strengthens. Democracy’s promise have made. It grants the power to transcend. is to welcome and direct that diversity toward an implicit and collective understanding of “the way things are.” That is America. Stacy C. Hollander Exhibition Curator CHRISTIAN STRENGE (1757–1828) 1 Liebesbrief, c. 1790 In 1776, Hessian-born Johann Christian Strenge married, and had a daughter. Two years after the was one among twelve hundred men who either untimely deaths of both wife and child, he were conscripted or enlisted in the 5th company remarried and, by 1794, had purchased land in of the Grenadier Regiment, led by Colonel East Petersburg, where he removed with his Johann Gottlieb von Rall, to fight for the British growing family. Here he became a respected and during the American Revolution. The troops successful schoolteacher, scrivener, justice of arrived in New York in August; by December, the the peace, and property owner. majority had been taken captive in the pivotal Strenge was a member of the Reformed Church, Battle at Trenton, when General George but he made many forms of fraktur for Mennonite, Washington’s Continental Army crossed the Lutheran, and Reformed constituencies. These Delaware River to make a surprise attack in included bookplates, writing samples, birth the early morning hours of December 26. The records, presentation frakturs, tunebooks, and Hessian soldiers were marched to Philadelphia elaborate papercut Liebesbriefe, or love letters. where they were paraded through the streets The center and each of the sixteen hearts in this before being interned in camps in Lancaster, Liebesbrief are beautifully inscribed with con- Pennsylvania. Strenge gained his freedom in ventionalized inked sentiments that appear in 1777, and rejoined his regiment. After the war other similar examples by his hand. ended in 1783, he did not return to Europe with his regiment but instead remained in Lancaster, FOUNDERS LUCINA HUDSON (1787–?) 2 Liberty Needlework, 1808 “Remember the ladies,” Abigail Adams adjured In 1777, Lucina’s father, William, served in the her husband, John Adams, in 1776. She was War of Independence as a corporal in Colonel advocating equal freedoms for women in the Jonathan Holman’s regiment under Captain newly conceived United States. What developed Jeremiah Kingsbury, whose daughter Hannah instead was a system of Republican Motherhood also stitched a Liberty needlework at the Abby in which education for women was not an end in Wright School. Lucina was thus one of several itself but was intended to equip mothers to raise young women from Oxford whose families were moral sons, the future leaders of the nation. closely allied through the war effort and who Lucina Hudson of Oxford, Massachusetts, was were privy to firsthand narratives of the war twenty-one years old when she stitched this from family members. This intimate connection accomplished silk needlework. She was at may have contributed to her rendition of the the upper age limit of students who attended the allegorical figure of Liberty as an approachable school operated by Abby Wright (1774–1842) contemporary, carrying a cornucopia in one in South Hadley, and of an age to knowingly arm and a liberty pole in the other topped by a comply with the ideals of Republican Womanhood Phrygian cap, the ancient headgear associated expressed in Wright’s educational goal to lead with liberty, and a striped banner literally young women “in the paths of rectitude and spangled with applied sequins. Nevertheless, virtue, that they may establish an unblemished the long-established use of the female figure reputation and become ornaments to society.” to symbolically embody civic values was a Although such needleworks were often intended double-edged device that both elevated and as evidence of taste and accomplishment aimed constrained, as many of the freedoms such at attracting the affections of a husband, Lucina figures represented were not extended to remained unmarried and died in Ellisburgh, women themselves. New York, where her family lived around 1823. FOUNDERS ARTIST UNIDENTIFIED 3 Genneral Waschington, c. 1810 At the invitation of William Penn, German immi- proliferated after the war. It is inscribed in grants had begun to settle in America by the German “General Washington and the city that seventeenth century. Their German-American was built in his name,” referring to the new descendants were among the forces organized capitol of Washington, DC, which was established to fight for independence against British tyranny. in 1791. The English words “Congress House” Known as the German Regiment, and formed further appear on the facade of a building that from settlers in Maryland and Pennsylvania, they bears features of Philadelphia’s Carpenters’ Hall participated in major battles in Delaware, and Independence Hall—sites of the First and New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, sometimes pitted Second Continental Congresses. In this testa- against soldiers from their homelands—Hessians ment to the formal installation of the newly who were conscripted to fight for Britain. This formed government in Washington, the artist drawing, in the colorful ink-and-watercolor style expresses his pride in Philadelphia’s pivotal role associated with the Germanic tradition of illumi- by conflating the removal of Congress from that nated documents known in America as fraktur, city to the new capitol and the establishment is probably based on one of the many images of of Congress on Pennsylvania Avenue. George Washington mounted on horseback that FOUNDERS ARTIST UNIDENTIFIED, POSSIBLY RICHARD BRUNTON (c. 1749–1832) 4 Lovebirds Print, late 18th century This tiny woodprint of “lovebirds” may have been debts were called in, taxes levied, veterans of the carved by Richard Brunton, a British-born war remained uncompensated, and individual engraver and diesinker whose picaresque story, states sought to keep money circulating despite uncovered by researcher Deborah M. Child, is a shortage of hard currency. By 1799, Brunton one of struggle to survive in the flux of early was arrested for “coining,” or minting counterfeit American nationhood. Brunton arrived in Boston coins, and given a two-year sentence in as a soldier in the 38th Regiment of Foot, and Connecticut’s notorious New-Gate Prison. After participated in major battles at Bunker Hill, his release, Brunton returned to Massachusetts followed by campaigns in New York, New Jersey, but no longer sought to earn a lawful income. and Philadelphia. By 1779, and after the British He was captured in 1807 with his tools and retreat, Brunton deserted at Verplanck’s Point, counterfeit bills, and given a life sentence to the New York, and made his way back to Boston.