Folk Art of the Americas

Folk art is a category of American art invented—and continually reinvented—by modern artists, collectors, dealers, curators, and art historians. The term is also often hard to define. Historically, folk art has been classified as art that is nonacademic, amateur, self-taught, primitive, rural, and/or vernacular, as well as utilitarian in nature. American artists and makers of the past never used the word folk to describe themselves or their work. In reality, the changing definitions of folk art reveal more about the values, needs, and desires of the community doing the defining than it does about the individual artworks themselves. We now recognize and appreciate each of these “folk” artworks not only for their aesthetic qualities, but also for their multilayered histories and the variety of stories and perspectives they can share.