"Inevitably, such images tell us more about the people who made them than those they are said to represent,” he said. In the exhibit, Joseph Zordan, consulting scholar and a member of the Bad River Ojibwe, contributed interpretive text about these vanes and the legacy of colonialism. Native Americans were a common subject of early American weather-vane art. The work set a record for a weather vane sale, US$5.8mil (RM25mil), at Sotheby’s in 2006. The exhibit also includes a 157cm (62-inch-tall), gilded statue of a Native American with bow and arrow pointed skyward. "The graphic impact is strikingly modern, speaking to the strong intersections between the modern aesthetic and what we call ‘folk.’” "The magnificent silhouette of this large vane communicates exactly why early 20th century Americans found weathervanes so appealing,” Gevalt said. A relatively simple design, it depicts the body and distinctive curved beak of the shorebird in gold-leafed sheet metal, and once sat atop the Curlew Bay sportsmen’s club in Seaville, New Jersey. The 1874 piece is large - nearly 2.1m (7 feet tall) and 1.2m (4 feet wide). The museum's curator, Emelie Gevalt, cited the museum's own Hudsonian Curlew as one of her favourites.
Gradually, they became appreciated as an art form. They were invented for one important job: telling which way the wind was blowing. Perched atop churches, barns, businesses, homes and seats of government for hundreds of years, weather vanes have taken the form of everything from farm animals to pets, storybook figures to race cars. This image provided by the American Folk Art Museum shows the Archangel Gabriel weather vane. An amateur meteorologist, he asked Mount Vernon’s architect, Joseph Rakestraw, to design the dove-shaped weather vane with olive branches in its mouth.
One work, Dove Of Peace, was commissioned by George Washington. The weather vanes range from simple carved birds, fish, livestock and dogs to figures that seem to literally be riding the winds - loping ponies, racing horses, fire trucks, and wildly imaginative witches, sea serpents and vehicles with many moving elements. The galleries feature around 50 weather vanes and patterns, along with ephemera like bills of sale, advertisements and vintage photographs. "Weathervanes have always been at once tools and sculptural architectural elements, combining function with visual interest and symbolism,” the show's curator, art historian Robert Shaw, writes in a companion book (RizzoliElecta). Gradually, they became appreciated as an art form.Ī new exhibition at the American Folk Art Museum in New York, American Weathervanes: The Art Of The Winds, showcases the history, technical virtuosity and artistic beauty of vanes made between the late 18th and early 20th centuries. Perched atop churches, barns, businesses, homes and seats of government, weather vanes have over hundreds of years taken the form of everything from farm animals to pets, storybook figures to race cars.