From her studio in Philadelphia, Melanie Bilenker creates beautiful portraits capturing the quiet moments of life. ⬬
Cultural Crossings
Americans are growing more fascinated with Aboriginal art, which John and Barbara Wilkerson have been collecting since 1994. ⬬
Weaving a New Dawn
Jeremy Frey, master Passamaquoddy basket maker, has taken traditional Indigenous forms to new heights. ⬬
Exhibitions: Modernism Begins in the Kiln
Between 2022 and the end of 2024, collector and scholar Martin Eidelberg gave the Metropolitan Museum of Art eighty late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century works of European ceramic art, most of them now on view in Making It Modern: European Ceramics from the Martin Eidelberg Collection. ⬬
Exhibitions: Working-class Roots
n 1905 Florence Thornton Butt used a sixty-dollar loan to open a supermarket—Mrs. C. Butt’s Staple and Fancy Grocery in Kerrville, Texas. Today Charles Butt remains the head of the grocery chain (now known as H-E-B), but he is also a passionate art collector focusing on American modernism. ⬬
Museums: Big Changes Are Coming to the American Folk Art Museum
2 Lincoln Square is ready for its much-anticipated refresh. ⬬
In Conversation: The Future of Vernacular Art in American Museums
We asked five curators at major institutions: How are you installing and considering folk and outsider art in the coming years? Leslie Umberger. ⬬
In Conversation: The Future of Vernacular Art in American Museums
We asked five curators at major institutions: How are you installing and considering folk and outsider art in the coming years? Kathleen Foster. ⬬
Objects: Blowin’ in the Wind
On the complex origins of whirligigs, a seaside art form that unfolded from the dying whaling industry. ⬬
Perspectives: Mitch’s Musings
The only collecting advice I ever give: if nobody wants an item or is not looking at it, make it yours. ⬬