Current Awareness: Outsider Art

Dear Mr. Indiana Jones,

Thank you for your query regarding outsider art. There are many excellent resources available online to supplement your research for the upcoming exhibition, and I have assembled ten of the most helpful for you to look over and serve as a jumping off point. Please let me know if you have any questions, or would like to pursue a particular area, since the field of outsider art is quite broad!


1. INTUIT is a non-profit organization based in Chicago whose mission is to collect, exhibit, and educate the public about outsider art. Established in 1991, they have a collection of over a thousand works of art, present exhibitions, publish The Outsider magazine, and frequently hold events. They are a wonderful institution, passionate about outsider art and artists.

2. Raw Vision Magazine is a high-quality quarterly magazine first published in 1989 with the intention of bringing outsider art to a wider audience. They take an international focus, and feature new discoveries of outsider artists and explore exhibitions and publications of note in the field. The museum library even has a subscription, so if you'd like any particular issues, I'd be happy to make them available to you.

3. The Outsider Art Fair has been exhibiting outsider art and artists in New York City for over twenty years. Despite a somewhat rocky history of relocations and changing ownership, the fair remains a staple of the New York art scene, giving artists the chance to have booths to display and sell their art and interact with their audience. A resurgence in the past couple of years has even inspired an Outsider Art Fair in Paris in 2013.

4. Detour Art is a blog showcasing outsider artists and locations of displays, with new artists and sites added weekly. Each artist gets their own blog post, describing their art and the context of it, as well as giving a biography of the artist and pictures of the art. The same is done for sites, describing and photographing the location and the art display and the artists involved, if available. Detour Art also collects links to outsider art in the news, reference websites, museums, galleries, and books on the field of outsider art.

5. The Archives of American Art is a part of the Smithsonian institution and features over 20 million records and papers focusing on visual art in America. Though it does cover all visual arts, not just outsider art, the Smithsonian is an important resource and loan out documents and other items for exhibition. They also have many resources on particular artists available online.

6. Collection de l'Art Brut Lausanne is the brainchild of Jean Dubuffet, the inventor of the term "l'art brut," to refer to art outside the mainstream, or art created by artists without formal training. It is a museum in Lausanne, Switzerland, with a collection of over 63,000 works by 1000 artists. The website also provides links to news on research in the field, as well as information on their collections and exhibits.

7. Outside In is a UK-based organization that works to create a platform for artists who have found it challenging to enter into the art world, whether because of health, disability, social circumstance, or isolation. They provide training for artists as well as organizations, and maintain a gallery featuring artists from across Sussex. They also provide links to further reading, and publish a blog and newsletter.

8. American Folk Art Museum is a museum in New York City dedicated to research, exhibitions, and education centered on American folk art, a subset of outsider art. Their collection features over seven thousand works from the eighteenth century to the present, and cover all mediums, from quilts to sculpture to portraits. Their online resources include digitized artwork, the library and archives, Folk Art Magazine (their publication), and various educational resources.

9. SPACES, or Saving and Preserving Arts and Cultural Environments, is a non-profit organization dedicated to identifying and preserving what they call Art Environments, which they define as immobile constructed works of any medium that are intended to be viewed as a whole, not in discrete pieces. Some exist indoors and some out, some are created by trained artists but many are not, and they seek to preserve as many as they can, through photography and description as well as the actual preservation of the space itself. Their website features many online resources, such as their digital archives of preserved spaces, a blog, and preservation resources.

10. Out of Art is a Dutch and English magazine recently translated into English in the hopes of reaching a wider audience. They publish twice a year, each issue on a different theme, and have articles on artists, exhibits, collections, other publications, and inspirational locations.

I hope these resources are helpful to you as you research for the exhibit. Again, if you have any questions, or would like further resources on a particular topic, do let me know.

Sincerely,
Kyle Huck, Librarian

(Current Awareness assignment, Librarian in a museum of Modern art for a curator seeking to do an exhibit on outsider art.)