A new home for folk art in New York

Founding a museum specifically devoted to American folk art was a novel and somewhat outlandish idea when a few passionate enthusiasts established the Museum of American Folk Art in a small town house in New York City in 1961. The museum got off to a rocky start, and by the 1970s, although well regarded for a number of its groundbreaking exhibitions, it was limping along without a clear long-range mission and without sufficient funds to ensure its long-term survival. It was in that decade that the museum encountered the individual who was to become its guardian angel, Ralph Esmerian. His wisdom, vision, and above all, passionate response to and enthusiasm for works created by amateur artists and craftsmen propelled the museum into the twenty-first century. His efforts culminate this month with the inauguration of the museum's new name, new building, and greatly expanded permanent collection.

The American Folk Art Museum opens in a new thirty-thousand-square-foot building at 45 West Fifty-third Street on December 11. In celebration of this milestone, Esmerian has donated more than four hundred seminal works from his personal collection of American folk art, in which nearly every medium is represented-from ceramics and weather vanes to furniture and paintings.

The building comprises eight floors and was designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien and Associates of New York City. The $22 million project is the firm's first public commission in this city. The new building will enable the museum to exhibit about five hundred works from its permanent collection of approximately four thousand objects. The striking three-dimensional and sharply angular facade of the building is sheathed in sixty-three panels of Tombasil (a white bronze alloy) pierced by openings that admit natural light into the galleries. Seven of the eight floors are dedicated to the public, and include an auditorium, classrooms, a library, a cafe, and a museum shop. The new building is also home to the museum's Contemporary Center, which is devoted to the study and appreciation of living, self-taught artists. What has until now been the temporary home for the museum, the Eva and Morris Feld Gallery at Two Lincoln Square, will continue to be operated by the museum.

On the surface Ralph Esmerian seems an unlikely person to have spearheaded the museum's achievements. A fourth generation dealer in rare colored gemstones, he was raised in an apartment filled with fine eighteenth- century French antiques. He was born in Paris of an Armenian-French father and an American mother, and the family moved to the United States during World War II. After graduating from Groton and Princeton, Esmerian moved to Athens to teach English, French, and theater It was in Greece that he encountered ancient pottery, which he believes connected him both spiritually and physically to a civilization thousands of years old. A week after his return to the United States in 1964 to enroll in graduate school (which he subsequently abandoned to follow in his father's footsteps), he happened on a Pennsylvania-German slipware plate, which he found just as seductive as the Greek pottery he had collected earlier This small child's plate became the first of his many folk art acquisitions.

In celebration of his gift, the museum has organized an exhibition entitled American Radiance: The Ralph Esmerian Gift to the American Folk Art Museum, which remains on view through June 2002. It is sponsored by Philip Morris Companies.

A second exhibition, on view through May 2002, is entitled Darger: The Henry Darger Collection at the American Folk Art Museum. It focuses on the recent accession of works by this twentieth-century self-taught artist. There are twenty-six paintings (many of which are double sided) as well as manuscripts and books.

Each exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue copublished by the museum and Harry N. Abrams.