From the beginning, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller (1874-1948) was influenced by an upbringing that fostered art appreciation. The daughter of a Rhode Island senator, Rockefeller was reared in an environment that supported education, learning, and art connoisseurship. After her marriage to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the son of the founder of Standard Oil Company, her interests continued to grow and in less than two decades, she amassed two world-class collections of American modern and folk art that became the foundations of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum in Williamsburg, Virginia. Rockefeller’s impact in the field of American folk art is immense and will be the primary focus of this talk, along with a look into highlights and favorites from Colonial Williamsburg’s collection.

Laura Pass Barry is the Juli Grainger Curator of paintings, drawings and sculpture at Colonial Williamsburg where she oversees the research, documentation, interpretation, and exhibition of fine, folk, and decorative arts paintings and sculpture at the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum, historic area exhibit buildings, and the Rockefeller’s Bassett Hall. She holds degrees in Art History and American Studies from the College of Wooster and the College of William and Mary. She has organized numerous exhibitions at the Foundation, most recently including Pierre Eugene du Simitiere: Artist, Naturalist, Collector (2022), The Art of Edward Hicks (2020), Artists on the Move: Portraits for a New Nation (2018), We the People: American Folk Portraits (2017), and America’s Folk Art (2017). She is also a contributing author to numerous articles as well as Flying Free: Twentieth-Century Self-Taught Art from the Collection of Ellin and Baron Gordon (1997), winner of the 1998 Independent Publisher Book Award; and The Kingdoms of Edward Hicks (1999); editor of Revolution & Evolution: Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum (2017); and co-editor of a forthcoming book highlighting the American folk art collections at Colonial Williamsburg.