Part of the newly acquired John Gaston Fairey collection of Mexican folk art is on display at AMSET through March 4.
Selections from The John Gaston Fairey Collection of Mexican Folk Art are on view at AMSET until March 4. This small selection of works made from materials as diverse as corn husks and tin foil to papier-mâché and ceramics functions as a small introduction to the larger collection, which is in the process of being catalogued and stored. Acquisitioning new artwork and collections is not always a fun job, but an absolutely necessary one in adding new works to the permanent collection and protecting works for display by future generations.
For the past year, AMSET has steadily packed and moved more than 450 pieces of artworks from the Hempstead residence of benefactor John Gaston Fairey, Texas A&M professor who taught in the architecture department and horticulturist. Since October 2017, contract registrar Elizabeth French has been working with boxes of packed-up artworks to help the museum document the collection and prepare it for proper storage.
“I started unpacking, and there is an amazing amount of packing material,” she says. “I have mostly been working to remove boxes and packing material from the storage area so that I can actually see the collection.”
The multiple-step process from unpacking to cataloging to preparing for long-term storage is a tedious and timely process, French says. After removing the packing material, she works to categorize the collection and begin preparing its official file for museum records.
“I am going to want to separate works according to what they are, for example a pot or bowl, but also by what they are made from such as ceramic or wood,” French says. “To catalog the items, I don’t have to know about the object but rather what it’s made from — it is more scientific. I’ll be able to do more research later once everything is catalogued, and I have made the physical folders about the individual object.”
Proper cataloguing is an essential process in museum acquisitions, French says.
“Part of documenting any collection are the personal records of the collector, how the collector catalogued his own collection,” she says. “Since John Gaston Fairey kept excellent inventory of the collection with photographs and categorized like-items together, such as trees of life and nativity scenes, it has been a useful tool for me.”
After cataloguing, storage is the next crucial step which takes into account not only where the art is stored, but how it is stored.
“I want the works to be stored in such a way that in the future when no one who has worked on this project will be around, it still makes sense,” French says.
French is responsible for ordering proper materials that will protect the works from outside forces, such as weather and moths, as well as protect them for travel as potential loans to outside museums. Archival materials are expensive, and AMSET is grateful to the Mamie McFaddin Ward Heritage Foundation and the Wilton and Effie Mae Hebert Foundation for their grant awards offering financial assistance.
This year’s introduction to the collection is only a small taste of what is to come in the future in showing the multi-faceted tenets of John Gaston Fairey’s Collection of Mexican Folk Art.
Caitlin Duerler, ISSUE staff writer