Photography and Folk Art at the Art Institute of Chicago: new models for exhibitions and scholarship

In the 1930s, a surging interest in early American vernacular arts, collectively referred to as folk art, converged with major photographic documentation projects of the Great Depression. These twin impulses—to collect the past and record the present—flourished concurrently during this critical period in American history. As artists, curators, collectors, and even government administrators sought to define American visual identities that were distinct from Europe, they found symbols of an American culture that was egalitarian, unpretentious, and self-made. The exhibition Photography and Folk Art: Looking for America in the 1930s (The Art Institute of Chicago, 2019) brought documentary photographs and folk art objects together to explore the aesthetic and conceptual connections between two fields—linked by overlapping networks of cultural agents—that had long been studied separately in disciplinary silos. This article details the exhibition’s collaborative research and discovery process, innovative display and interpretive strategies, and ultimately present-day relevance for twenty-first century audiences.