Your Holiday Selections

As most of you know, we recently held a two-week voting period to determine which folk art pieces from this blog would go on view in a special gallery at the Fenimore Art Museum next spring. Using the polling gadget from Blogger, quite a number of readers weighed in and, I think, came up with a brilliant selection of material for us to create a striking “American Folk Art @ Cooperstown” exhibition. Here are the winners:

A Bug’s Life – Oct 1 (featuring our Grasshopper weathervane)

Jewish Origins of Carousel Carving – Sept 28 (featuring a carved piece from the Empire State Carousel at The Farmers’ Museum)

Abraham Lincoln, the Kitchen Companion – Aug 28 (featuring BOTH the life-size statue and the bust of Lincoln by the same artist we received as a result)

Warrior Mermaid – Aug 19 (our great Mary Ann Willson “Maremaid” watercolor)

Knife Box – Oct 15 (this intriguing utilitarian piece will be coming home from the “Through the Eyes of Others” tour in January)

Hudson River Steamboat Collision – Nov 9 (I’m very excited about this piece, which hasn’t been on view in decades!)

A Deaf Artist in Early America – Oct 12 (my favorite folk portrait painter, the deaf artist John Brewster, Jr.)

Hidden Jewell – Nov 23 (our Goddess of Liberty weathervane)

A Canal Runs Through It – Nov 2 (our masterpiece landscape by Thomas Chambers, newly returned from the Chambers exhibition tour)

All in all, you guys really got it right. This is a wonderful selection of works that will allow us to explore a wide range of connections between American folk art and American culture. Since this exhibition will be up all year, we will probably hold another round of voting in the spring to see what pieces get rotated in from the posts I’ve done since mid=December.

Thanks to all who participated in this historic event for our museum. Have a great holiday!!!