NEW YORK, NY.- The American Folk Art Museum today is announcing the creation of the 30/60 Anniversary Endowment Campaign, chaired by Trustees and folk art collectors Lucy Danziger and Karin Fielding. Funds raised from the 30/60 Campaign will ensure support of the museum’s future activities for generations of visitors. During the initial, quiet phase of the endowment campaign, the museum raised $4.5 million in gifts and pledges and an additional $2.5 million in bequests, bringing the total commitment of $7 million to the museum. This financial support includes leadership gifts from Karin and Jonathan Fielding, Laura and Richard Parsons, and Lucy and Mike Danziger.

The Endowment Campaign comes as the museum is celebrating thirty years at its space at 2 Lincoln Square on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, which it has used for major exhibitions since 1989. AFAM is also approaching the sixtieth anniversary – in 2021– of the founding of the museum in 1961. AFAM’s current exhibition, Made in New York City: The Business of Folk Art, is the first of several landmark exhibitions planned for the museum’s anniversary years.

“The American Folk Art Museum is the leading international institution showcasing self-taught art,” says Monty Blanchard, president of the Board of Trustees of AFAM. “The 30/60 campaign will enable the museum to continue its mission of ‘getting the art out there!’ It will keep the museum in the forefront of the exhibition, collection, research, and scholarship of these creative expressions of the human spirit.”

The museum is pleased to announce the first endowed exhibition gallery has been named in honor of Jonathan and Karin Fielding, Los Angeles-based philanthropists and collectors who have been generous funders of the museum over the last decade.

“Through its critically-lauded exhibitions, publications, programs, and scholarly initiatives, AFAM invigorates the conversation about folk art,” said Jason T. Busch, director of AFAM. “The increased endowment will afford opportunities for the next generations of museum audiences to experience the impact of self-taught art across time and place.”

As part of the 30/60 campaign there will be naming opportunities at the museum, including key staff positions, galleries and spaces, and public programs, including traditional folk art and self-taught art symposia.