‘Art By Lake’ To Introduce Novel Folk Work
Editor’s Note: Here’s the start of a June 8 article in the New York Times on a piece of folk art that will be unveiled this weekend at The Fenimore Museum’s “Art By the Lake” event.
“A 1930s shoeshine stand bedecked with gilded knobs and beaded fringe, which was once exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art — where it played a role in a famous director’s ouster — resurfaced last month and is headed back into the public eye.
“The Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y., purchased the imaginatively decorated stand, which was created by an Italian immigrant bootblack, Giovanni Indelicato, who ran a makeshift booth on lower Broadway and sometimes went by the name Joe Milone. The Fenimore bought it a few weeks ago for $10,000, after the New York folklorist Joseph Sciorra of Queens College, a specialist in Italian-American culture, alerted the museum, which has a specialty in American folk art, that the piece had re-emerged after decades in obscurity.”