Weather vanes: Exhibit looks at artworks with a purpose

Perched atop churches, barns, businesses, homes and seats of government, weather vanes have over hundreds of years taken the form of everything from farm animals to pets, storybook figures to race cars.

They were invented for one important job: telling which way the wind was blowing. Gradually, they became appreciated as an art form.

A new exhibition at the American Folk Art Museum in New York, “American Weathervanes: The Art of the Winds,” showcases the history, technical virtuosity and artistic beauty of vanes made between the late 18th and early 20th centuries. The free exhibit runs through Jan. 2.

“Weathervanes have always been at once tools and sculptural architectural elements, combining function with visual interest and symbolism,” the show's curator, art historian Robert Shaw, writes in a companion book (RizzoliElecta).

The galleries feature around 50 weather vanes and patterns, along with ephemera like bills of sale, advertisements and vintage photographs.

The weather vanes range from simple carved birds, fish, livestock and dogs to figures that seem to literally be riding the winds – loping ponies, racing horses, fire trucks, and wildly imaginative witches, sea serpents and vehicles with many moving elements.

One work, “Dove of Peace,” was commissioned by George Washington. An amateur meteorologist, he asked Mount Vernon’s architect, Joseph Rakestraw, to design the dove-shaped weather vane with olive branches in its mouth.

The museum's curator, Emelie Gevalt, cited the museum's own “Hudsonian Curlew” as one of her favorites.

The 1874 piece is large — nearly 7 feet tall and 4 feet wide. A relatively simple design, it depicts the body and distinctive curved beak of the shorebird in gold-leafed sheet metal, and once sat atop the Curlew Bay sportsmen’s club in...