Maie Bartlett Heard Collection

Although the museum’s founder, Florence Dibell Bartlett, placed her collection at the museum earlier as a loan, the earliest officially accessioned collection came from her sister, Maie Bartlett Heard. Accessioned in 1949, several years before the museum opened to the public in 1953, this foundational gift consisted primarily of folk art from Asia. Maie, who with her husband Dwight founded the Heard Museum in Phoenix in 1929, made this contribution in support of her sister’s vision and the future development of the Museum of International Folk Art.