In collaboration with the Wichita Falls Alliance for Arts and Culture and the African American Museum, Dallas, a new exhibit at the Wichita Falls Museum of Art at MSU Texas (WFMA) will celebrate the works of self-taught artists who created art from everyday objects. "The Souls of Black Folk" will open with a public reception from 4-6 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 4, at the WFMA.

"Folk Art is an important and unique art form which affirms the basic human impulse to create," said Joshua Maxwell, WFMA curator of education. "Artworks by untrained artists are powerfully evocative of personal visions."

The tradition of Folk Art represents objects created as part of material culture - things that people were using in their homes, such as fabrics and scraps of wood, to create three-dimensional pieces. The exhibition includes works by such notable artists as Clementine Hunter, David Butler, Johnny Banks, George White, Sister Gertrude Morgan, Bessie Harvey, and Willard "The Texas Kid" Watson.

According to a release from the Wichita Falls Alliance for Arts and Culture, the African American Museum's Folk Art Collection is one of the finest of its kind in the nation. Its permanent collection includes more than 500 pieces of decorative art made by self-taught artists spanning the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.

"We are thrilled to partner with the Wichita Falls Alliance for Arts and Culture and the African American Museum, Dallas, to present an outstanding exhibition of folk art from the permanent collection of the African American Museum in Dallas," said WFMA director Francine Carraro

The exhibition is funded in part by a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts. It will be on display through March 17.

Contact the museum at 940-397-8900 or www.wfmamsu.org to schedule a group tour, or for more information. Admission is free. Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

Wichita Falls Museum of Art at MSU Texas

2 Eureka Circle

Wichita Falls, Texas 76308