January 28 - March 18, 2018
Work by Judith Scott is included in the exhibition Outliers and American Vanguard Art curated by Lynne Cooke. The exhibition originated at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and is currently on view at The High Museum of Art in Atlanta, GA until September 30. It will travel to Los Angeles County Museum of Art from November 18, 2018, through March 18, 2019.
From the National Gallery of art: Their classification may have varied—from folk and primitive to naïve and visionary—but intermittently throughout the history of modern art, gates have opened, boundaries have dissolved, and those creating art on the periphery have entered the art world. Outliers and American Vanguard Art is the first major exhibition to explore those key moments in American art history when avant-garde artists and outsiders intersected, and how their interchanges ushered in new paradigms based on inclusion, integration, and assimilation. On view in the East Building of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, from January 28 through May 13, 2018, the exhibition brings together some 250 works in a range of media by more than 80 schooled and unschooled artists, such as Henry Darger, William Edmondson, Lonnie Holley, Greer Lankton, Sister Gertrude Morgan, Matt Mullican, Horace Pippin, Martín Ramírez, Betye Saar, Judith Scott, Charles Sheeler, Cindy Sherman, and Bill Traylor.
Spanning more than a century, paintings, sculptures, works on paper, photographs, books, and mixed-media assemblagesare organized into three sections, each of which focuses on a distinct period when artists, art institutions, and audiences engaged intensively with the work of self-taught artists, or autodidacts: c. 1924–1943; c. 1968–1992; and c. 1998–2013. These pivotal periods of social, political, and cultural upheaval stimulated artistic interchanges that challenged or erased traditional hierarchies. While the show's first two sections historicize the evolving identities and roles of the distinctly American versions of modernism's "other," the last section proposes models for exhibiting art created on the periphery with that of the mainstream in ways that differ from today's prevalent approaches. Beyond bringing to light little-known or overlooked artists, Outliers and American Vanguard Art probes prevailing assumptions about creativity, artistic practice, and the role of the artist in contemporary culture.
"This groundbreaking exhibition considers how, and in what terms, self-taught art has been represented in the past, and how institutions like the Gallery might present it today," said Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art, Washington. "As the nation's collection of fine art, we are proud to initiate this discussion of what has been left out of American modernism's dominant narrative, and why it should be included."
The exhibition was on view at the National Gallery of Art from January 28 through May 13, 2018; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, from June 24 through September 30, 2018; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art from November 18, 2018, through March 18, 2019.