Fly Girl

July 24, 1897 marks the birth of Amelia Earhart, the daring American aviatrix who set many flying records but vanished during her attempt to fly around the world in 1937.

This airplane from the museum's folk art collection certainly couldn't get someone off the ground.

The sculpture is a pastiche of elements from a variety of aircraft used between 1933 and 1935. It most closely resembles the military A-8 "Shrike," in general use by 1933 and reproduced in widely published accounts of the latest breakthroughs in aviation technology. The artist took pains to be accurate in his use of proportions and certain details. This piece, however, is not a model or exact replica. Although the cabin can be pivoted open or removed completely to reveal a storage space, the sculpture is primarily decorative.

Source: Lynda Roscoe Hartigan. Made with Passion: The Hemphill Folk Art Collection in the National Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C. and London: For the National Museum of American Art by the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990).

Pictured: Unidentified, n.d., Airplane, about 1933–35, carved and painted wood, tinned iron, painted glass, and metal hardware, 22 x 43 5/8 x 43 1/2 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Herbert Waide Hemphill, Jr. and museum purchase made possible by Ralph Cross Johnson.