American Folk Art Museum

Unfortunately, I was not allowed to take ANY pictures at this museum, and I wish I could have, because it had some wonderful things, but on every floor, if I even pulled out my phone, museum security would run up to me and be like: "no pictures, no pictures!!!!." But anyway, today, my last day, I ventured over to 53rd street in Manhattan to go to the American Folk Art Museum. It is located next door to the MOMA, so it was simple to find. There are five floors of artwork. I had never been to a "folk art" museum of any kind, so my only expectations were that I would probably see a bunch of funky stuff made by natives of America or other types of things like that. Boy was I wrong! They had an exhibit of water color paintings on one floor by an artist named Henry Derger. They were landscape paintings, but a little on the abstract side but stressed people in real detail. The colors were wonderful. There were some funky indian looking things on the very top floor. But my favorite part of the museum was an exhibit I absolutely loved: the Collection of Ulysses Davis. Davis was a wood carver from Savannah Georgia. Mostly working out of his home and barbershop in which he owned and gave haircuts, he revealed his wonders to his customers and friends. He was a master wood worker. There were crazy animals and canes to people. He seemed to have done a wood carving of many famous people that influenced him directly: Malcom X, Martin Luther King Jr., Frederick Douglass, etc. One really neat thing was that all lined up in a row, Davis had carved the head and shoulders of each and every American President, each looking like he had a different personality and each wearing a different suit or tuxedo. The incredible thing was, there faces really did express emotion and a sense of unique personality. Finally, at the end of Davis's exhibit, he had carved a self portrait of himself. I was dying to take a picture of it because I just loved this piece. It was fairly small, but he had glasses and a very very large pipe sticking out of his mouth. I think Davis was obviously suggesting that he liked to just sit back, work, give haircuts, and smoke his pipe and just observe and carve. I loved the folk art museum. This concludes my blogs as of now. I have enjoyed blogging about all I have seen and done this trip. I think I have done more than five blogs, but that is ok because I accidently just did some about personal adventures I went on as well as the required ones we were supposed to do.