Adele Earnest (1901-1993) was an American folk art collector and historian, noted as an authority on wildfowl decoys.

Early life

Earnest was born in

Waltham, Massachusetts Waltham ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, and was an early center for the labor movement as well as a major contributor to the American Industrial Revolution. The original home of the Boston Manufacturing Company, ...

, and attended Wellesley College. As a young woman, newly married, she lived for a time in Pennsylvania German country, an experience to which she ascribed her interest in folk art.

Art collection

She worked for a time as Eva LaGalliene's stage manager before moving to

Stony Point, New York Stony Point is a Administrative divisions of New York#Town, town in Rockland County, New York, United States. It is part of the New York City Metropolitan Area. The town is located north of the town of Haverstraw, New York, Haverstraw, east and ...

, where with Cordelia Hamilton, she opened the Stony Point Folk Art Gallery in 1948. The gallery soon became known for its displays of folk sculpture, of which decoys were a particular highlight. Growing from this interest, Earnest in 1965 published ''The Art of the Decoy: American Bird Carving'', among the first books to discuss decoys in a scholarly context. Alongside Hamilton, Marian Willard, Burt Martinson, Albert Bullowa, and Herbert Waide Hemphill, Jr., she was a founding trustee of the

American Folk Art Museum The American Folk Art Museum is an art museum in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, at 2, Lincoln Square, Columbus Avenue at 66th Street. It is the premier institution devoted to the aesthetic appreciation of folk art and creative expressions of ...

. Instrumental in supporting many of its early programs, she donated numerous works to the collection, including a pair of decoys by Lothrop T. Holmes; also among her gifts was a

weathervane A wind vane, weather vane, or weathercock is an instrument used for showing the direction of the wind. It is typically used as an architectural ornament to the highest point of a building. The word ''vane'' comes from the Old English word , m ...

depicting the

Archangel Gabriel In Abrahamic religions ( Judaism, Christianity and Islam), Gabriel (); Greek: grc, Γαβριήλ, translit=Gabriḗl, label=none; Latin: ''Gabriel''; Coptic: cop, Ⲅⲁⲃⲣⲓⲏⲗ, translit=Gabriêl, label=none; Amharic: am, ገብ ...

which went on to become a symbol of the institution. Weathervane - American Folk Art Museum, NYC - IMG 5873

In 1984 she published a combination memoir-history of the field of folk art collecting, ''Folk Art in America: A Personal View''. Earnest traced her interest in the art of decoys to a set of three carvings of dovetailed geese which she purchased in 1954; two of these she sold to Stewart Gregory, and one has since been dubbed the Earnest-Gregory dovetailed goose.

Death

She died in a nursing home in

Mount Vernon, Washington Mount Vernon is the county seat of Skagit County, Washington, United States. The population was 35,219 at the 2020 census. It is one of two principal cities of and included in the Mount Vernon- Anacortes, Washington Metropolitan Statistical Ar ...

. She was survived by her son, Eugene, and two grandchildren, her husband Joel having died many years before. Earnest's papers are held in the archives of the American Folk Art Museum.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Earnest, Adele 1901 births 1993 deaths American women historians American art historians Women art historians American art collectors Women art collectors 20th-century American historians 20th-century American women writers 20th-century American philanthropists Wellesley College alumni People from Waltham, Massachusetts People from Stony Point, New York Historians from Massachusetts Historians from New York (state) Philanthropists from Massachusetts Philanthropists from New York (state) American women philanthropists Museum founders 20th-century women philanthropists