Mystery and Benevolence: Masonic and Odd Fellows Folk Art from the Kendra and Allan Daniel Collection At the American Folk Art Museum in New York.
You can’t keep a good museum down. Ever since the return of its headquarters to its Lincoln Center venue, after the sad demise of its beautiful new building, AFAM has been showcasing ever-increasingly intriguing and relevant exhibitions.
The current one, “Mystery and Benevolence,” is both evocative and often simply strange. Fraternal references are a rich part of contemporary American popular culture. But the seductive mystique of secret societies, with their cryptic signs, gestures, and arcane rituals, has been embedded in our American experience since the early eighteenth century. Before the age of mass production, the artist who painted a portrait or embellished a piece of furniture might have also decorated a parade banner, an apron, symbols on a chart, or a backdrop for a fraternal lodge. More important, he or she encoded the ideals of fellowship, labor, charity, passage, and wisdom—the core of fraternal teachings—into the many forms associated with fraternal practice. The iconic art and objects showcased in Mystery and Benevolence relate the tenets of fraternal belief through a potent combination of highly charged imagery, form, and meaning. The exhibition explores the fascinating visual landscape of fraternal culture through almost two hundred works of art comprising a major gift to the American Folk Art Museum from Kendra and Allan Daniel.
(Co-curators: Stacy C. Hollander, Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs, Chief Curator, and Director of Exhibitions, American Folk Art Museum, and Aimee E. Newell, Director of Collections, Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library. An exhibition catalog will be available. Check out www.folkartmuseum.org)
This striking and informative exhibition is on view until May 8.
Independent Order of Odd Fellows Inner Guard Robe
The Ward-Stilson Company
New London, Ohio
1875–1925
Velvet, cotton, and metal
37 x 23″
Collection American Folk Art Museum, New York
Gift of Kendra and Allan Daniel, 2015.1.153
Photo by José Andrés Ramírez