A Search for Authenticity: Self-taught Art and Objects

Do you have some rocks on your kitchen window sill that you admire? People have selected rocks to admire for thousands of years. Some call them Scholar’s Rocks. The appreciation of aesthetic form in those kitchen window sill rocks, folk art, self-taught artists, and certain objects of curiosity is what this exhibition is all about.

The Teenuh and John Foster Collection embraces much more than “Scholar’s Rocks,” but, the red thread throughout is their love of aesthetic form that appeals to their sensibilities of what we may call, the authentic. “Authentic” here means bringing a certain amount of closure to what we might call “genuine” art expression. Their collections are about finding the beauty in the everyday. Their collections include works of art made by those artists who have studied art in school and those who are “self-taught.” It also includes objects not necessarily thought of as art proper; things like sawfish bill, or a stack of 75 years’ worth of drugstore prescription receipts or a collection of bootjacks. 

 Exhibition highlights include art by, among others, Howard Finster, Jesse Howard, Lee Godie, Eugene von Bruenchenhein, Nek Chand, Eddie Arning, Felipe Jose Consalvos, and important anonymous folk art and objects.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website