Off-Center Views: MUSEUM OF INTERNATIONAL FOLK ART: PART I

5/27/22

MUSEUM OF INTERNATIONAL FOLK ART: PART I

MUSEUM OF INTERNATIONAL FOLK ART: PART I

One Museum Hill

Santa Fe, New Mexico

[Clicking on individual photos = larger display]

If you visited our home, you’d find masks on several walls and small carvings and statues scattered among the things most people use to decorate their dwellings. Part of this has deep roots–Emily’s great uncle was a whittler and I love Inuit carving–but a lot of our objects d’art were inspired by having known the regal Miriam Usher Chrisman, an important advisor during my early graduate studies. She loved to invite grad students to her home, which she and her husband Donald filled with wonders gathered during their travels. As Miriam told the story, when they were younger and raising their children, they lacked the money to collect painting, sculpture, and other items associated with the (elitist) term “fine art.” So, they collected folk art instead.

It will thus come as no surprise when I tell you that Santa Fe’s Museum of International Folk Art (MIFA) is one of our favorite museums anywhere in the world. We’ve been there three times, but it’s so chockful of delights large and small that you could visit daily for a year and would probably still miss something grand.

The MIFA has expanded since our first visit and now has wings for special exhibits, not to mention an entrance corridor for assemblages such as saint medallions, etchings, and hangings. But the main attraction is its warehouse-like maze of folk art fashioned from wood, ceramics, clay, fibers, dried plants, and glass. It is true to its handle in that it is truly international in scope.

Among the marvelous things about folk art is that genres meld into one another and it’s impossible to judge any of it. By definition, most folk artists are untrained. As such the stories and cultural values embedded within objects take priority. Perhaps we can look at two pieces and see that artist A was a more skillful wood carver than B, but that in no way means you or anyone else will prefer one over the other. The MIFA has some themed displays, but often it doesn’t. For example, cases of ceremonial masks are hung willy-nilly and unless you grab the laminated card for individual cases–objects are numbered rather than placarded–you won’t know for certain if a mask is Amazonian or Ghanian.

You would exhaust yourself in short order if you tried to ID every object and the cool thing is that you don’t need to do so. The MIFA is a place to feel the magic of human creativity and it simply doesn’t matter who created, when, or why.

I could fill my blog with a month’s worth of pictorial postings but instead, here’s a Part I sampler. When I know something about the photo, it is so labeled. Otherwise, do what I did and take a casual meander to see what catches your eye.

Rob Weir