Mattie Lou O'Kelley

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Mr. Robert Bishop dies
Museum head who helped Ga. artist
From staff and wire reports
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 24 Sep 1991, page C-05

NEW YORK - Mr. Robert Bishop, director of the Museum of American Folk Art who helped discover Georgia’s Mattie Lou O'Kelley, died of AIDS- related lymphoma Sunday at St. Vincent's Hospital here. He was 53.

Mr. Bishop had been director of the folk-art museum in Manhattan since 1977. He expanded its art collection, New York real estate holdings and membership; started the Great American Quilt festival; and founded a graduate program in folk art studies at New York University. The latter is the first in the United States focusing on folk art as art, not ethnographic material, according to the New York Times.

In 1975, when Mr. Bishop was editor of publications at the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village in Michigan, he spotted Ms. O'Kelley's primitive art at an Artists in Georgia show directed by Gudmund Vigtel at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.

Mr. Bishop was intrigued by Ms. O'Kelley's work and drove to her home in rural Maysville to meet her. He later took charge of her career, arranging for her to move to New York and become affiliated with a gallery there. Last year two of her paintings were auctioned by Sotheby's in New York for $19,000 and $16,000 respectively. Mr. Bishop wrote the introduction to the 1989 coffee-table book "Mattie Lou O'Kelley: Folk Artist."

Mr. Bishop was born in Readfield, Maine, and moved to New York City in the mid-1950s to be a dancer. He studied at the School of American Ballet, but left the stage to concentrate on art and antiques.

While at the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, he received a Ph.D. in American culture from the University of Michigan.

Henry Niemann was his companion. Surviving is a brother, Richard E. Bishop of Bangor, Maine.

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