The Museum of International Folk Art describes the medium as art that is decorative or utilitarian, used every day or reserved for high ceremonies, is handmade or includes handmade elements, as well as new, synthetic or recycled components.
After a two-year overhaul, the Virginia Museum of History & Culture has reopened. Formerly known as the Virginia Historical Society, one of the oldest museums in the country, it had focused on collecting, preserving and researching Virginia’s history.
Museum Visit: A Lesson in Folk Art Jenamarie Boots
Antonio Pollaiolo #3642 by Howard Finster (1916–2001), 1984.
All objects illustrated are in the Longwood Center for the Visual Arts, Longwood University Farmville, Virginia, William and Ann Oppenhimer Folk Art Collection, gift of William and Ann Oppenhimer.
Visiting the Oppenhimer Collection of Folk Art at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia, requires a walk across the school’s leafy campus. Highlights from the collection are rotated in a gallery tucked away in a space that doubles as a student meeting area in the Upchurch University Center. Thanks to the pandemic, the space was empty when I visited, but the potential of the room for socializing was clear, and, indeed, was one of the chief reasons it was chosen to display the art. For William and Ann Oppenhimer, longtime collectors and co-founders of the Richmond-based Folk Art Society of America, art is all about relationships. As the gallery’s co-curator Michael