Good opportunity though to talk a bit about old american furniture.
"A HALF CENTURY AGO (1949), Joseph Downs, the legendary curator of the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, told scholars and collectors attending the first Williamsburg Antiques Forum in Virginia that as far as American furniture was concerned, little of artistic merit was made south of Baltimore."
BAM!!! It was on like a neck bone as they say in the american south land. That was a very odd
thing to say ( considering the forum he was speaking at was in Williamsburg Virginia). Frank Horton, a legendary collector, decided to open a museum with a focus on southern material culture. Frank had friends, very wealthy friends like the RJ Reynolds tobacco family type friends. In 1965, Frank opened MESDA and the rest as they say, is history.
