“History of NH Folk Art” with Gerry Ward at Dover Library March 17

The Friends of the Dover Public Library are pleased to present an illustrated presentation by Gerry Ward on the History of New Hampshire Folk Art, on Tuesday, March 17 at 7pm in the library’s Lecture Hall.

Folk art incorporates types of artistic expression that lie outside the so-called fine arts. This art form incorporates a variety of objects, including portraits, watercolors and drawings, elegant calligraphy, landscapes, decoys, rugs and quilts, trade signs, wood carvings, powder horns and scrimshaw, fire buckets, fanciful carved and painted furniture, and other individualistic and idiosyncratic works of art that are not easily classified. Folk art objects illustrate the fundamental human urge to create art, regardless of formal training, and also to embellish artifacts of everyday life, allowing ordinary objects to provide visual pleasure and delight through color, patterning, and abstract forms.

Gerald W.R. Ward is the Katharine Lane Weems Senior Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture Emeritus at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He is the editor of the Portsmouth Marine Society Press and an adjunct professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. In this program, he will focus on examples of folk art from across the Granite State, from the eighteenth century to the present.

He was the curator of the Portsmouth Historical Society's 2019 summer exhibition on New Hampshire folk art and author of the catalogue accompanying the show. Among his many publications is the introduction to American Folk Art from the Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2001).