It is spring and I want to go to The American Folk Art Museum. Robert Bishop was a ballet dancer, and danced on Broadway before becoming the director of the museum. His passion for folk art came from his grandmother—she worked with antiques in Maine. My grandmother loves quilts, but has never finished one. She got me started on sewing. My stepdaughter and her best friend made a quilt by hand their senior year of high school. The two of them go to different colleges, but they share the quilt, taking turns with it. Some of the scraps in the quilt are from my great-grandmother’s curtains that hung in my family’s old farmhouse. The fabric is white, with a pale blue folk motif. The American Folk Art Museum is my stepdaughter’s favorite museum. She likes the museum because it’s free, it’s “not too big,” and because the museum celebrates artists “whose inspiration emerges from unsuspected paths and unconventional places, giving voice to individuals who may be situated outside the social mainstream.” The museum also defines these artists as “individuals whose singular talents have been refined largely through personal experience.” It is spring and I want to go to The American Folk Art Museum.
-Morgan English