Multiple Visions: A Common Bond

The Girard Collection, from Alexander and Susan Girard

Best known as a designer for Herman Miller, Inc., Alexander Girard had an insatiable appetite for the visual beauty of folk art. He and his wife, Susan, began collecting together on a postponed honeymoon to Mexico in 1939, when they came home with a carload of objects. Guided by the Italian saying “Tutto il mondo e paese”—the whole world is hometown—the Girards eventually amassed a collection of more than 106,000 objects from across the globe. Their 1978 gift of this collection to the Museum of International Folk art quintupled the size of our collection and prompted the construction of a new wing, which opened in 1982 and houses a mere 10% of the Girard Collection in the permanent exhibition Multiple Visions: A Common Bond, which was designed by Alexander Girard himself. This collection includes numerous multiples and is notable for its great breadth, including traditional arts, popular arts, and paper ephemera. “I believe we should preserve this evidence of the past, not as a pattern for sentimental imitation,” Girard once said, “but as nourishment for the creative spirit of the present.” Indeed, folk art was an important inspiration for Girard’s design work.