The Museum of International Folk Art

The Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe opened in nineteen fifty-three as a gift to New Mexico from Florence Dibell Bartlett, who spent decades collecting handmade objects from around the world. She believed that ordinary people's creativity, expressed in household objects, toys, textiles, and religious art, revealed more about human culture than anything in a conventional art museum. The Girard Wing, added in nineteen eighty-two, displays objects from designer Alexander Girard's vast personal collection in dense, theatrical installations that have been called among the most extraordinary museum displays in the United States. The building is part of the Museum Hill complex above Canyon Road, and the permanent collection now spans over one hundred countries, and it is widely described as the largest collection of international folk art in the world.