Like our son’s discovery once of a two-carat gemstone sparkling among the tourist-worn cobbles of Bourbon Street, in New Orleans, our family’s visit to the South Street Seaport Museum was an unexpected delight. Tucked in among the mall boutiques and gelato carts, this collection of venerable buildings and seacraft in lower Manhattan is an enchanting treasure trove of New York’s history—well worth braving the tour buses and tchotchke vendors.

DART editor Peggy Roalf lured us to the waterfront to see Compass: Folk Art in Four Directions, an exhibit organized by the American Folk Art Museum. Passing through the narrow, crisply contemporary lobby and atrium, we were surprised to find a multifloor warren of galleries. Compass is on the first exhibition floor. Fourth and fifth floor galleries are filled with exhibits ranging from a contemporary multimedia “Timescape” to a wonderful display of beautiful old hand tools—part of the museum’s permanent collection that vividly evokes the seaport’s artisanal heritage. The rooms, stripped down to their brick-and-beam basics, are low-ceilinged and subtly lit, perfect for setting off the exhibitions, particularly the 300-year span of the artworks and Americana of Compass. Here are some impressions:

Joni Blackburn
My favorite piece was probably the first thing I saw upon entering the show—an intricate Noah’s ark made of bone, paper, and other scraps, possibly made in England by a French prisoner during the Napoleonic wars. Not part of this exhibition, but certainly in keeping with it, were bits and pieces of machinery left from when the museum spaces were factories and warehouses. I especially liked the gigantic wooden hopper for cleaning burlap bags—it looked just like a Martin Puryear sculpture!

James Sandlin
There was one piece that really caught my eye: a whirligig. Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Oh, one of those six-inch cheap plastic windmills that you can pretty much buy anywhere.” This one was made out of wood, and the carving skill was pretty amazing. The artist made the piece of wood into a little soldier with a sword in each hand. Each sword is set at a different angle so that the wind will make both of the arms spin as well as spin the whole body. I think that the main reason that I loved it so much is that it was such a simple design, but the artist made more than just a whirligig.

David Sandlin
When Peggy invited us to visit this show at the Seaport Museum, I jumped at the chance. I figured we’d see works by folk and outsider artists I’m familiar with, as well as a lot of things new to me. I wasn’t disappointed: there are some exquisite pieces by the reclusive, self-taught artist Henry Darger, who created an alternate universe of battling hermaphroditic little girls, and Joseph Yoakum, who drew dreamlike landscapes of places he’d never visited and never would visit.

A lot of work by great woodcarvers are in the show, including a tableau of monkeys at a card table by Elijah Pierce (above right). There is also a Rev. Howard Finster painting—we had the pleasure of visiting him in his studio once in the 1980s, and I was happy to see his work here among so many other American visionaries (above left).

But even more than my old favorites, I was excited to see works by artists unknown to me. Two in particular were so inspiring they made me want to run straight to my studio and grab my pens and brushes. The first is a sketchbook made from scrap paper and old envelopes and drawn with stove soot and charcoal by James Castle, a deaf man who never learned to speak, read, or write (below right). The two pages open for exhibit show beautifully strange thumbnail drawings of mysterious heads as inventive as anything by Picasso or Steinberg.

Another piece I really liked was a bizarre geometric drawing filled with text ranting against the Ku Klux Klan and other occult organizations, but the style of it looks exactly like some secret certificate the Masons might use—the very thing it was raging against—very Nabokovian!

My favorite utilitarian object in the show is a beautifully crafted three-legged folding chair made in the 19^th century by Hosea Hayden. It is covered in incised images and text, like “Mythology rules…Science always loses out,” an insight as relevant today as ever.

Peggy Roalf
I was delighted when the Sandlin family—David, a painter, printmaker and book artist who was recently a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library; his wife, Joni, an editor at Brooklyn Botanic Garden; and their son, James, a sketchbook artist who will be in eighth grade at Tompkins Square Middle School this fall—agreed to join in the exploration of the American Folk Art Museum’s installation at the South Street Seaport Museum.

I’ve always been intrigued by the traveling limners, portrait artists in America's 18^th and 19^th century. These multi-taskers usually went from place to place in warm weather on horseback, creating portraits of the local gentry. During the winter months at home, they would create trade signs, including highly decorated stagecoach doors, among other utilitarian items.

Compass includes a number of amazing portraits, including two by the great Ammi Phillips (1788-1865), “Gentleman in a Black Cravat” and the pendant “Lady in a Gold Colored Dress.” The portraits, done around 1835 to 1840, are installed in a setting worthy of the station of the sitters, surrounded by fancy furniture and decorative objects.

Before photography, only well-off people could afford to have their portraits done, and paintings of children are pretty unusual. In this show is a portrait of little girl that includes symbolic elements that mark it as being a post-mortem depiction: the lovely child, in a pretty pink dress, is surrounded by a scattering of roses; in the background is a dead tree trunk from which a string of grapes is hung.

Compass: Folk Art in Four Directions, organized by the American Folk Art Museum, continues at the South Street Seaport Museum through October 7^th. 12 Fulton Street (between Water and South Streets), NY, NY. Check out the calendar of public programs, including a gallery tour this afternoon at 1 pm.