Running just a little late, we made our way to the home of Barry and Allen Huffman in Hickory. Knowing that the Huffman’s have given a large part of their storied folk art collection to the Hickory Museum, we were only a little surprised to find the house still bursting at the seams, full of amazing art. Some personal favorites – Raymond Coins carvings, Q. J. Stephenson’s prehistoric animals, McKendree Long’s epic biblical paintings and the Vollis Simpson bicycle rider suspended in the middle of the house. Pleasure and treasures everywhere you looked. After bonding with the Huffmans and board and staff members of the Hickory Museum of Art over lunch, we headed to the Museum to view the Huffman Collection in a beautiful renovated high school gym now gallery. Founded in 1943, Hickory Museum is one of the oldest institutions devoted to American art. It will soon install the Huffman collection in open storage galleries to encourage public access and interest in folk/outsider art, now one of its primary areas of emphasis. The Huffmans and the Museum are to be congratulated for this powerful partnership that will establish the Hickory Museum as one of the most important centers of folk art scholarship in America.