DATE=4-12-02

TYPE=Special English Feature

NUMBER=7-22798

TITLE=SPECIAL ENGLISH AMERICAN MOSAIC#865 Folk Art Museum

BYLINE=Shelley Gollust

TELEPHONE=619-2585

DATELINE=Washington

EDITOR=marilyn christiano

CONTENT=

HOST:

A new museum opened recently in New York City. It is called the American Folk Art Museum. _________tells us about it.

ANNCR:

The new museum provides a permanent home for American folk art. Folk art includes traditional objects that people made to use in their homes during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They created these objects to be beautiful as well as useful. Folk art also includes the work of self-taught artists who were not trained in art schools.

The new American Folk Art Museum is an unusual modern metal building on West Fifty-Third Street. The building is tall and narrow. A special show celebrates the opening of the museum. It is called "American Radiance: The Ralph Esmerian Gift to the American Folk Art Museum."

Ralph Esmerian is an official of the Folk Art Museum. He gave four-hundred pieces from his private collection to the museum. They include paintings, clay containers, cloth needlework pieces and painted household objects of the past two-hundred years.

The objects were made by famous artists and unknown artists -- sailors and farmers and schoolgirls. Many of the pieces are well-known examples of American folk art. Some are serious pieces. Others are fun to look at and make the visitor smile.

One of the well-known paintings is called "The Peaceable Kingdom" by Edward Hicks. He painted it around Eighteen-Forty-Six. The painting shows many kinds of animals, including a lion and a lamb, living together in peace. He got this idea from the Christian holy book, the Bible.

Visitors to the Folk Art Museum can see many unusual metal or wood sculptures that are fun to look at. For example, weathervanes are made to turn to show the way the wind is blowing. One metal weathervane is shaped like the famous Statue of Liberty in New York harbor.

People made other sculptures in the Eighteen-Hundreds to help sell products or services. One of them is a two-meter tall wooden statue of a man in a red, white and blue painted suit. It is called "Dapper Dan." It stood outside a place where men got their hair cut.

The director of the new folk art museum is Gerard Wertkin. He says folk art is the art of American culture. He says folk art can help people remember the American spirit of creativity and democracy.