Outliers and American Vanguard Art

Some 250 works explore three distinct periods in American history when mainstream and outlier artists intersected, ushering in new paradigms based on inclusion, integration, and assimilation. 

The exhibition aligns work by such diverse artists as Charles Sheeler, Christina Ramberg, and Matt Mullican with both historic folk art and works by self-taught artists ranging from Horace Pippin to Janet Sobel and Joseph Yoakum. It also examines a recent influx of radically expressive work made on the margins that redefined the boundaries of the mainstream art world, while challenging the very categories of “outsider” and “self-taught.” 

Historicizing the shifting identity and role of this distinctly American version of modernism’s “other,” the exhibition probes assumptions about creativity, artistic practice, and the role of the artist in contemporary culture. 

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.

Sister Gertrude Morgan, Revelation 7. chap, c. 1970, courtesy of The Museum of Everything, London, photo © Todd-White Art Photography

Whether or not you go, the exhibition catalog, Outliers and American Vanguard Art,  offers an opportunity to consider works by schooled and self-taught creators in relation to each other and defined by historical circumstance.The art works in his companion catalog come from three distinct periods when the intersections between mainstream and outlier artists were most dynamic and productive, ushering in exhibitions of art based on various degrees of co-existence, inclusion, and assimilation. Also examines a recent increase of radically expressive work that challenges what it means to be an outlier today., revealing how these distinctions have been freighted with a particularly American point of view as she investigates our assumptions about creativity, artistic practice, and the role of the artist in contemporary culture.

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