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Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum
 Exterior of museum, 2020 | |
 | |
| Established | 1957 |
|---|---|
| Location | Williamsburg, Virginia |
| Coordinates | 37°16′07″N 76°42′17″W / 37.2686°N 76.7048°W |
| Website | www |
The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum (AARFAM) is the United States' first[1] and the world's oldest continually operated museum dedicated to the preservation, collection, and exhibition of American folk art.[2] Located just outside the historic boundary of Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, AARFAM was founded with a collection donated by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and an endowment from her widower, John D. Rockefeller Jr., heir to the Standard Oil fortune and co-founder of Colonial Williamsburg.
With her seminal collection, Abby Rockefeller "elevated a body of material that had long been dismissed as homespun craft to a nationally-recognized and highly-regarded form of American art."[3] The original building opened in May 1957, with Mitchell Wilder as Director, and was expanded in 1992 before being moved and expanded again in 2007, each time to accommodate its growing collection. Abby Rockefeller's collection of 424 pieces became the basis of a collection that now includes more than 7,000 folk art pieces[2] dating from the 1720s to the present. A further expansion at its current location is projected to open in 2019.
Having opened originally as the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Collection (AARFAC), the facility changed names in 1977 to the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center (AARFAC) and again in 2000 to Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum.[4] Now co-located with the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum, both collections retain their respective names — and are together known as the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg.
- ^ Sonja Barisic (August 28, 2007). "Colonial Williamsburg folk art museum gets a new home". USAtoday.
- ^ a b Ben Swenson. "The Eye of a Folk Art Pioneer". Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Spring 2017.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
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