City: Williamsburg, VA

Category: Tours & Attractions

Telephone: (757) 220-7724

Description: This museum, the oldest institution in the United States dedicated solely to the collection and preservation of American folk art, reopened in February 2007 in new quarters adjacent to the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum. Exhibits feature paintings, drawings, furniture, ceramics, whirligigs, weather vanes, carvings, toys, quilts, musical instruments, and other folk works representing many diverse cultural traditions and geographic regions. John D. Rockefeller Jr. established the museum in 1957 in honor of his wife, Abby, who began collecting folk art early in the 20th century. In 1939, she gave her core collection of 425 objects to the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, which formed the basis for the museum’s collection. Today the collection of more than 5,000 objects includes items dating from the 1720s to the present shown in 11 galleries constituting 11,000 square feet of exhibition space.