Tour of "Madalena Santos Reinbolt: A Head Full of Planets" at the American Folk Art Museum

Please join Rachel Strauber, a long-time docent at the American Folk Art Museum, on Wednesday, March 19 at 10:30 AM for a tour at the museum of "Madalena Santos Reinbolt: A Head Full of Planets" - the first comprehensive survey of her art and her first-ever solo museum exhibition outside of her native Brazil. 

Madalena was a Black woman, who was barely literate.  Brought up on a farm, she spent most of her life as a domestic worker in the homes of wealthy Brazilians. She began painting in oils in 1950, when she was about 38. At the time, she was employed as a live-in cook for a highly regarded Brazilian architect, Lota de Macedonia Soares, and her partner, the American poet and sometime painter, Elizabeth Bishop, at Soares' home in Petrópolis, a mountain escape from the heat of Rio for the wealthy. 

Reinbolt is best known known for large-scale embroideries made from hundreds of vibrant colored threads. She switched to embroidery from oils in the mid 1960s when working the home of another family in Petropolis. She continued until about a year before she died in 1976. She called them wool paintings, and, indeed, her stitches look like brush strokes. She portrays the farm where she grew up, nature - real and fantastical, places she has lived and her religious traditions. 

The Musuem is located on Columbus Avenue between 65th and 66th Streets.  The buildings around it are under construction, so it is a bit difficult to find. The group is limited to 15. There is no charge, but donations are appreciated.  If you would like to join this tour, please click on the green REGISTER button below.

Rachel Strauber, event host