Mounted during the United States’ semiquincentennial, the new exhibition Folk Nation: Crafting Patriotism in the United States draws on the American Folk Art Museum’s collections to examine the connections between vernacular art and the ways Americans have constructed a shared sense of identity.
The show introduces visitors to the origins of “folk” as an art category shaped by collectors, dealers, curators and the art market. It presents vernacular objects as multilayered cultural artifacts whose meanings were created not only by their makers but also by those who collected, displayed, and preserved them.
The Peaceable Kingdom with the Leopard of Serenity © American Folk Art Museum
Americans have long preserved objects as a way of telling stories about themselves. Beginning after the Revolutionary War and intensifying in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, people looked to earlier American artifacts to build a national history and a collective identity. That impulse often reflected lingering anxieties about the young nation’s cultural standing compared with Europe.
From the early 20th century onward, collectors and scholars used the term “folk art” to champion a wide range of creative production dating back to the 1700s. The category came to encompass work produced outside academic institutions, celebrating qualities such as authenticity, ingenuity, resourcefulness and patriotic feeling.
Uncle Sam riding a bicycle whirligig © American Folk Art Museum
Folk Nation covers a kaleidoscopic mix of genres — from weathervanes and trade signs to quilts, carvings, painted portraits and commemorative sculpture — illustrating how these objects served as symbols of core American values and everyday life.
Cenotaph to three martyred presidents © American Folk Art Museum
At the same time, the exhibition acknowledges how these ideas were often romanticized, producing a nostalgic and partial view of the nation’s past. Organized around themes that shaped American life — including family, heritage, spiritual vision and belonging — Folk Nation explores how vernacular objects both reflected and helped construct American identities.
Folk Nation is on view now through Sept. 13, and during a brief break will reopen Oct. 8 to remain on view through Feb. 28, 2027. It runs concurrently with the installation Locating Girlhood: Place and Identity in Early American “Schoolgirl” Art.
The American Folk Art Museum is located at 2 Lincoln Square, New York City. Admission is free.