A whimsical pop-up shop in Cornwall, Connecticut, is selling a selection of works from the folk art collection of Jerry Saltz and Roberta Smith, the art world's best-known critic couple. The shop, called the Cornwall Whale, holds about a dozen works from the couple's former summer home, among them several paintings dating to the 19th and 20th centuries.

The paintings on offer are mostly landscapes, along with some moody ship scenes, and most are unsigned and undated, in keeping with the anonymous, vernacular character of folk art. The shop opened in mid-October and is open on Saturdays and Sundays, and by appointment, through December.

Cornwall is a village of fewer than 2,000 people about 100 miles from New York City, and the pop-up has already drawn a crowd from the art world. The artists Sam McKinniss and Nicole Eisenman are patrons of the Whale, and Laurie Simmons, a neighbour of the shop's owner, came by shortly after it opened.

The sale is a small, personal affair rather than a formal auction or gallery show: a critic couple thinning out a collection gathered over years in a country house, and a village shop becoming, for a season, an outpost of the New York art world.