High Museum Receives Over 100 Sculptures By Self-Taught Artists

March 8th, 2021

American polychrome carved wooden sculpture depicting George Washington on horseback. This early 20th century piece, by an unidentified artist, was a gift to the High Museum from the Levine Folk Art Collection.

Courtesy of The High Museum of Art

The High Museum has new additions to its permanent collection: 114 sculpted wooden figurines by self-taught North American artists — a recent gift from Connecticut-based art collectors Anne and Robert Levine.

“City Lights” host Lois Reitzes was joined by the curator of folk and self-taught art at Atlanta’s High Museum, Katherine Jentleson, to explore this historic acquisition.

Among the collection’s works highlighted in the interview:

A diorama by Quebecois sculptor Moise Potvin of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidential cabinet, including the first woman cabinet member Frances Perkins
Several examples of the “whirligig” sculptural tradition, such as “The Red Baron’s Airplane”
Children’s toys, such as a mechanical Abraham Lincoln that chops wood

On what drew the Levine family to Atlanta’s High Museum:

“They were just impressed by what they saw at the museum, in terms of the diversity of our audience and in terms of all the different ages they saw enjoying the art at the museum. People from all different backgrounds, in terms of race and gender and ability,” Jentleson said. “They were really moved by seeing this broad swath of the Atlanta metropolitan population at the museum, actively learning and enjoying the collection.”

Getting beyond the academic in art and representation:

“The material was present in our museum and other museums prior to the 1990s,” Jentleson said. “But, in general, it is true that it wasn’t until the 1990s when you really saw a lot of institutions taking seriously the kind of calls for multiculturalism that had emerged especially in the 1980s, really demanding that museums take a hard look at themselves and their definition of art, and the people that they called artists, and try to broaden that.”

“[The Levines] collected lots of different kinds of folk art, art made by untrained American artists, but they gradually realized that the core of their interest was around this theme of history that seems so ubiquitous for so many different artists. … By 2011, I believe, they had carvings of all but 12 of the U.S. presidents,” Jentleson said. “It was a journey for them. They realized that their great passion was around this theme of American history in wood.”

Jentleson is also the author of the book, “Gatecrashers: The Rise of the Self-Taught Artist in America,” published in April 2020. It’s an in-depth exploration of folk art’s role and resurgence in America’s cultural mainstream of the 20th century.