FAIRFIELD, CONNECTICUT.- American folk art collector Cyril I. Nelson, 78, died. He donated around 150 works to the American Folk Art Museum in New York. He worked for fifty years as an editor at E. P. Dutton and published many books on folk art. One of these is "American Painted Furniture, 1660-1880" (1972), by Dean A. Fales Jr. and Robert Bishop. He also edited the Quilt Engagement Calendar, which was published every year from 1981 to 2001. Together with the American Folk Art Museum he published several exhibition catalogs, such as "Glorious American Quilts" (1996), by Elizabeth V. Warren and Sharon L. Eisenstat. In 1974 he became a trustee of the museum.