Displaying items by tag: William Matthew Prior

Two years ago, the Folk Art Museum in New York City was on the brink of closure due to its poor financial standing. Most of the museum’s troubles stemmed from a $32 million construction project that placed a flagship building next door to the Museum of Modern Art on West 53^rd Street in Manhattan. After the project drew to a close in 2001, the Folk Art Museum struggled to pay off their debt to the Trust for Cultural Resources and in 2009 the institution defaulted on its payments. Desperate, the Folk Art Museum sold their flagship building and moved into a smaller space and drastically reduced its budget.

Now, after some major sacrifices, it appears that the Folk Art Museum has regained its footing. Attendance is expected to reach 80,000 this fiscal year, which ends June 30, 2013; last year the Folk Art Museum welcomed 66,000 patrons. A number of major donors are back on board with the museum including the Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Fund, which recently gifted $25,000 to the institution. The Folk Art Museum will also participate in this summer’s highly anticipated Venice Biennale by sending an artwork from its collection to the show.

The Folk Art Museum has been strengthening its relationships with other institutions through collaborative exhibitions. The museum is currently hosting an exhibition of William Matthew Prior (1806-1873) oil paintings titled Artist and Visionary: William Matthew Prior Revealed (on view through May 26, 2013), which was organized by the Fenimore Art Museum is Cooperstown, NY. The exhibition Bill Traylor: Drawings from the Collections of the High Museum of Art and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, which features a range of works by the self-taught artist, Bill Traylor (1854-1949), will open on June 11 and run through September 22, 2013.

New York’s American Folk Art Museum has mounted an exhibition devoted to the notable Boston-based itinerant folk portraitist William Matthew Prior (1806-1873). Artist and Visionary: William Matthew Prior Revealed was organized by the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York and features over 40 oil paintings spanning Prior’s career from 1824 to 1856.

Prior, who moved from Maine to Boston in 1840, is best known for his paintings of working-class Americans, a demographic that had previously been overlooked by artists. Prior developed a simple, straightforward style to meet the tastes and means of his humble clientele, which often included families and children. However, Prior went on to depict a diverse range of sitters that included himself, a famous preacher, and a number of African Americans. Prior often shifted his style from modest to elaborate based on his subject.  

Artist and Visionary: William Matthew Prior Revealed, which is the first comprehensive museum retrospective to focus on Prior, will be on view through May 26, 2013.

For William Matthew Prior, art was a business. While living in Portland, Maine, in the 1820s, he received some sort of art instruction that enabled him to paint in a manner that approached an academic model. From his earliest work in the 1820s until his final efforts in the early-1870s, he adapted his painting style to respond to the economic variables that affected his clientele. He created “short hand” methods of taking likenesses for many who could not afford—or did not desire—his more sophisticated examples. Prior’s decorative paintings appealed to a solidly middle-class taste and, after an early venture into the world of the art establishment in Boston, he viewed himself as an artisan, not a fine artist. He actively responded to the social issues of his time and his religious beliefs added a significant dimension to his life and work. Unlike most of his contemporaries, he never had to pursue another occupation to support his large family and he remained a painter throughout his life. Prior’s mastery of his craft—and his pragmatic marketing strategy—made art available to a previously overlooked group of Americans.