Earl Cunningham's America

Earl Cunningham's America presents Cunningham as a folk modernist who used the flat space and brilliant color typical of Matisse and Van Gogh to create sophisticated compositions. Wendell Garrett brings his broad knowledge of decorative arts and folk art to bear, placing Cunningham in a context of ideas and events. Virginia Mecklenburg, senior curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, traces Cunningham's life and situates his work in the context of the folk art revival that brought Edward Hicks, Grandma Moses, and Horace Pippin to national attention. Carolyn Weekley, director of museums at Colonial Williamsburg, shows how Cunningham's style developed over the course of his career.
The catalogue accompanies an exhibition of Cunningham's work that opens in Washington, D.C. in the summer of 2007. The show will feature fifty of the more than 450 works Cunningham produced. His imaginary landscapes are marvels of the unexpected and unlikely. Pink flamingos dot the shoreline of the Maine coast. New England cottages sit at the edge of Florida swamps, and Seminole Indians wear feathered headdresses. In this make-believe world, Cunningham merged past and present and defined time by sunsets, dawns, seasons, and storms.

WENDELL GARRETT was a historian and decorative arts authority who was well known for his work as an “Antiques Roadshow” (PBS) appraiser. VIRGINIA MECKLENBURG is a chief curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. CAROLYN WEEKLEY is a curator at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.