Common Goods: American Folk Crafts as Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, 1932—33

Abstract

During New York City's newly opened Museum of Modern Art's (MoMA's) fourth exhibition season of 1932–33, while director and intellectual leader Alfred H. Barr, Jr. was on sabbatical leave in Europe, interim director Holger Cahill mounted a show of 18th- and 19th-century American arts and crafts. Offered for sale in New England as antiques at the time of the show, the items on display in Cahill'sAmerican Folk Art: The Art of the Common Man in America 1750–1900obscured the divisions between theavant-gardeand the traditional, between high art and the everyday object. In an exhibit of items not easily categorized asmodernnor properly consideredart, MoMA admitted such local antiques and curiosities as weather vanes and amateur paintings into spaces otherwise reserved for the likes of Cézanne and Picasso.