the employment of these two curators, most of the items in the collection were discovered in their places of origin. For example, in 1934, Cahill was sent by Rockefeller to the southern United States to personally gather new items for the collection. On this trip, Cahill found items in people's sitting rooms, attics, and carpenter's shops. In Orangeburg, South Carolina, Cahill found one of Rockefeller's most important acquisitions, a watercolor titled The Old Plantation. A portion of Rockefeller's collection was purchased from Elie Nadelman, who had lost his fortune to the Great Depression. Nadelman's folk art collection purchased and split amongst Rockefeller, Henry Francis du Pont, the Cloisters of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Brummer Galleries. Early Exhibitions of the Collection In 1930 and 1931, the Newark Museum exhibited a collection of American folk art. Approximately 10 percent of these items were attributed to the same anonymous donor, in actuality the donor was Abby Rockefeller. In 1932, Rockefeller's collection was again loaned anonymously, this time to the Museum of Modern Art for an exhibition titled American Folk Art: The Art of the Common Man in America. Of the 175 objects on display, 174 of the objects belonged to Rockefeller, with the remaining single object belonging to Henry Cahill. The exhibition was highly successful, and became the first traveling exhibition of American folk art, visiting six American cities from 1932 to 1934. The objects displayed during these two early exhibitions were mostly from New England and Pennsylvania and constituted a wide range of art categories including: oil paintings, pastels, watercolors, paintings on velvet, paintings on glass, wood sculptures, metal sculptures, and chalkware. Development of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum In 1934, Rockefeller began to lend parts of her collection for permanent display in the Ludwell-Paradis House in Colonial Williamsburg. The exhibits were installed mostly under the guidance of Edith Halpert and opened to the public in 1935, remaining open until January 1956. Other pieces were hung in Colonial Williamsburg in neighboring exhibition buildings or operating taverns, blending in with the existing decor. In 1939, fifty-four pieces of the folk art collection were donated to the Museum of Modern Art. In 1954, six years after Abby Rockefeller's death, the March edition of Antiques magazine published an announcement that a new museum would house the Rockefeller folk art collection. John D. Rockefeller, Jr. provided the funds for construction of