American Folk Art Museum

These works span both traditional folk art and the work of modern and contemporary self-taught artists and Art Brut. In its ongoing exhibitions, educational programming, and outreach, the museum showcases the creative expressions of individuals whose talents developed without formal artistic training. Since 2018, the Museum has been led by Jason T. Busch, Becky and Bob Alexander Director & CEO. In March 2025, readers of Newsweek magazine voted the American Folk Art Museum #1 in the publication's Best Art Museum 2025 readers' choice contest. Admission to the museum is free.

Since receiving a provisional charter in 1961, the American Folk Art Museum has continually expanded its mission and purview. At its inception, the museum lacked a permanent collection, an endowment, and a building. Despite lacking these institutional fixtures, founding Trustees Joseph B. Martinson and Adele Earnest had a vision: the advancement of the understanding and appreciation of American folk arts. In the museum's more than sixty-year history, this dedication has held true. The museum's evolving mission reflects the shifting understanding of folk art internationally. The Museum of Early American Folk Arts, as it was known initially, held its first exhibition in a rented space on 49 West 53rd Street in 1961. The museum's collection was launched in 1962 with the gift of a gate in the form of an American flag, celebrating the nation's centennial. The gift reflected the museum's early focus on eighteenth and nineteenth-century vernacular arts from the northeast America. In 1966, after receiving a permanent charter, the museum expanded its name and mission. As the Museum of American Folk Arts, it looked beyond the traditional definitions of American folk art. Its exhibitions and collection began to reflect “every aspect of the folk arts in America – north, south, east, and west.” Founding curator Herbert W. Hemphill Jr. “expanded the notion of folk art beyond traditional, utilitarian, and communal expressions.” Under his direction, the museum began to champion idiosyncratic and individualistic artwork from the fields of traditional and contemporary folk art. In doing so, the museum ushered in a new era in the field of twentieth-century folk art. As the museum's mission developed, so did its effort to establish a permanent home. In 1979, the museum's Board of Trustees purchased two townhouses on West 53rd Street, adjacent to Museum's rented quarters at 49 West 53rd Street. In 1984, while waiting to develop the West 53rd properties, the museum continued to organize exhibitions and educational programs from a former carriage house at 125 West 55th Street. Five years later, a new branch of the museum, the Eva and Morris Feld Gallery, opened at 2 Lincoln Square, New York, opposite Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. The 1990s brought new focus to the diversity and multiculturalism of American folk art. Offering a more inclusive vision, the museum began to present African American and Latino artworks in their exhibitions and permanent collections. Director Gerard C. Wertkin announced American folk art's common heritage as “promoting an appreciation of diversity in a way that does not foster ethnic chauvinism or racial division.” The museum further established its broadened outlook with the 1998 formation of the Contemporary Center, a division of the museum devoted to the work of 20th and 21st century self-taught artists, as well as non-American artworks in the tradition of European art brut. In 2001, the museum opened the Henry Darger Study Center to house 24 of the self-taught artist's works, as well as a collection of his books, tracings, drawings, and source materials. In 2001, the museum chose its current name, American Folk Art Museum. Recognizing that American folk art could only be fully understood in an international context, the word American functions as an indication of the museum's location, emphasis, and principal patronage rather than as a limitation on the kind of art it collects, interprets, or presents. The museum's current programming reflects this shift in focus. Past exhibits have included folk arts of Latin America, England, Norway, among other countries and continents. A design team led by Woody Pirtle of the Pentagram agency refreshed the museum brand and identity, including a logo still in use today, and signage for a 2001 reopening in their redeveloped building on 45–47 West 53rd Street. Designed by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, it was an eight-level building on the forty-foot-wide, one hundred-foot-long site. From 2001 to 2011, the midtown space served as the museum's main branch. However, facing increasingly high bond payments, the museum sold the property to the Museum of Modern Art. When MoMA announced that it was going to demolish the building in connection with its expansion, there was outcry and considerable discussion about the issue, but the museum ultimately proceeded with its original plans. The building was demolished in 2014, though the unique metal façade was preserved in storage by MoMA. Following the sale, the American Folk Art Museum used its facility at 2 Lincoln Square as its main exhibition and shop space. In 2014, the museum's archives, library, and administrative staff moved to Long Island City, Queens. In September 2017, the museum opened the Self-Taught Genius Gallery at its facility in Long Island City. The STG gallery shows art from the museum's collection in thematic exhibitions that change every few months. The STG Gallery is funded in large part by the Henry Luce Foundation. It is temporarily closed, with no stated reopening date. The American Folk Art Museum temporarily closed in May 2025 for a renovation.

From 2012 to 2018, the museum's Executive Director was Anne-Imelda Radice. In 2018, Radice was succeeded by Jason T. Busch, who joined the museum as Executive Director in September, and was later named the Becky and Bob Alexander Director & CEO in 2022. Stacy C. Hollander was the museum's chief curator and director of exhibitions from 1992 until stepping down in 2019. Since joining the museum in 2013, Dr. Valérie Rousseau has served as the curator of self-taught art and art brut. Emilie Gevalt joined the museum as curator of folk art in 2019, and in 2025 Gevalt was named Deputy Director and Chief Curatorial and Program Officer.

Each year, the museum mounts a number of exhibitions, which span from the traditional folk arts to the more contemporary “self-taught” expressions. The museum's exhibits frequently examine the works of a specific artist or the significance of a particular medium, such as quilts or tinsel paintings. By raising traditional folk artists and self-taught artists from the periphery of the mainstream art world, the museum has continued to prove "the worth of instinctive, self-taught artistry." Through its exhibits, the museum continues to develop the understanding of folk and self-taught artists. Past exhibits have showcased the works of “undersung” masters, such as Thomas Chambers and Asa Ames. Additionally, the museum has hosted solo exhibitions dedicated to the work of self-taught greats: Martín Ramírez, Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, Willem van Genk, Ronald Lockett, John Dunkley, Paa Joe, and Bill Traylor. Past exhibits have also positioned traditional folk art in conversation with more contemporary art. In the museum's 2008 exhibit, The Seduction of Light: Ammi Phillips/ Mark Rothko Compositions in Pink, Green, and Red explored the visual connections between Rothko's famed color blocks and Phillip's heightened color palette. In 2013, the museum invited thirteen fashion designers to create an original work, inspired by a piece in their collection. The resulting exhibit “Folk Couture: Fashion and Folk Art” ran from January 21 – April 23, 2014. In 2014, the museum launched the exhibition, Self-Taught Genius: Treasures from the American Folk Art Museum. Featuring more than 100 works of art, "Self-Taught Genius" offered "an intellectually provocative effort to rethink the nature of artistic creativity" from the eighteenth century to the present. Following its New York premiere, the exhibition travelled to six cities, as part of a national tour funded by the Henry Luce Foundation's 75th anniversary initiative. Recent major exhibitions include Morris Hirshfield Rediscovered, a landmark exhibition that reintroduced the singular self-taught artist of the 1930s and 1940s to contemporary audiences. The New York Times named the exhibition a critic's pick. In 2023, the museum presented Unnamed Figures: Black Presence and Absence in the Early American North, which featured 125 works including paintings, needlework, and photographs, that focused on figures who appear in—or are omitted from—early American images. The exhibition challenged conventional narratives that minimized early Black histories in the North, revealing the complexities and contradictions of the region’s history between the late 1600s and early 1800s. The exhibition was heralded by The New York Times as 'a vitally important, deeply moving show.'

Cited as one of the "World's Best Museum Gift Shops" in Condé Nast Traveler, the museum's gift shop offers gift items, handcrafted in the folk tradition, such as jewelry, personal accessories, frames, toys, objects for the home, as well as note cards, books, and catalogs.

Standing as "one of New York City’s great treasures", the museum's 7,000 plus collection has been formed almost entirely through gifts. The collection ranges from early portraits by Sheldon Peck, Ammi Phillips, Asa Ames, colorful paintings by Sam Doyle, and Samuel Addison Shute and Ruth Whittier Shute, quilts and schoolgirl needlework, furniture, and weathervanes to works by acclaimed masters such as Thornton Dial, Morris Hirshfield, Martín Ramírez, Judith Scott, Mary T. Smith and Bill Traylor. The museum continues to add to its growing collection. In recent years acquisitions have included a version of Edward Hicks's (1780–1849) famed The Peaceable Kingdom. Notably, this painting, which Hicks gave to his daughter, remained with Hicks's descendants for many years. Other acquisitions include portraits Increase Child Bosworth and Abigail Munro Bosworth by Sheldon Peck (1797–1868), Pickman's Mephitic Models by Paul Laffoley (1935–2016), and Plantation Life by Clementine Hunter (1886/87–1988). Street artist KAWS donated a rare sculpture by self-taught artist William Edmondson to the museum in 2021. Other recent acquisitions include works from the Audrey B. Heckler collection, including dozens of masterpieces by the likes of Aloïse Corbaz, William Edmondson, Madge Gill, Morris Hirshfield, Martín Ramírez, and Adolf Wölfli. The museum announced in April 2025 that it received a major gift of five masterworks by Morris Hirshfield from the Estate of Maria and Conrad Janis, son of legendary art dealer and gallerist Sidney Janis, comprising one of the most significant groups of Hirshfield paintings donated to an institution in recent years. Additionally, the museum has a large collection of archives, artist files, films, recordings, photographs, original research, historical records, and other assorted and valuable ephemera. Most notably, the museum holds the largest collection of archival materials from self-taught artist Henry Darger.