Outsider Art Exhibition

Hello Dr. Jones,

Thank you for contacting the Modern Art Museum for research assistance in regards to  your upcoming outsider art exhibition. I have put together a list of diverse resources that will give you up to date and varied selections of  outsider art online resources. They range from art news aggregators, art auction and art market news, as well as sites that offer a look at specific aspects of the outsider art culture.

1.) Outsider Art Fair
The Outsider Art Fair has been in existence for 24 years, it is currently owned and operated under Wide Open Arts, LLC. It is a highly regarded fair that is held in both New York and Paris “to recognize and champion art brut and self taught artists”. This site gives access to ticket information, background on outsider art, and previous fairs. There are links to OAF’s facebook, twitter, and instagram. Of particular note is their Tumblr. This is a valuable site that is updated fairly often with alerts about exhibitions, images, and articles & reviews.

2.) Raw Vision Magazine
The only international journal of outsider art where you can view the latest issue, back issues, subscribe, view galleries, and even buy books. Raw Vision also provides their definitions for outsider art and related topics, articles, videos, and links to other helpful resources, along with many other offerings.

3.) ARTnews

A leading source of art coverage since 1902, now in a digital format. Can easily search the site for “outsider art” and view their archived pieces, as well as track new updates from the site directly or its various social media outlets (instagram, facebook, twitter, and rss feed).

4.) Modern Art Notes Podcast

Weekly podcast series hosted by Tyler Green, where he invites artists, art historians, and authors to come and discuss their work. A great way to find out about artists and hear what they have to say about their own work. Offers numerous social media links, where you can track the new episodes, twitter, facebook, reddit, tumblr, and pinterest.

5.) beinArt Collective

beinArt Collective is an international network for artists who create surreal and imaginative themes known as “visionary art”. Included is their blog where news, articles, and interviews are featured; artist information; beinArt Publishing; their store to purchase original works; links to galleries and additional blogs and magazines; and the choice of staying up to date with their various social media platforms.

6.) Detour Art

A site dedicated to “outsider, folk, visionary, self-taught, vernacular art and environment discoveries found all along the back roads (and side streets) around the world”.Their blog posts are regularly updated and highlight places of interest, their artist section is updated and added to on a weekly basis. Detour Art also provides a very extensive Resources page that includes museum and gallery news, additional links and books; it also has a Reference page with useful definitions, user generated lists, and even how to help save a site.

7.) artnet

An online resource for the international art market for auctions done online. It offers numerous art market resources to aid in the selling, buying, and researching of art, from the Old Masters to Contemporary art. These in depth resources include, their valuation tool, Price Database; Market Alerts; Art Gallery which promotes over 1,700 galleries with over 170,000 works by 35,000 artists; Artnet Auctions an online auction platform for Modern and Contemporary art with over 23,000 registered buyer and sellers from 120 countries; Analytics Reports to track the market performance of artists, art categories, against leading financial indices; and artnet News, their platform for event, trend, and development news in the global art community.

8.) Outsider Art News

This is a relatively new online resource but since it started it has regularly been updated every few days. It mainly offers links to news, events, and commentaries from the worlds of Outsider Art, Art Brut, Folk and Contemporary Art.

9.) Ricco-Maresca Gallery
This New York based gallery has showcased and promoted self taught artists for over 35 years. Their site offers a comprehensive lists of new and established artists, as well as access to their current and archived collections. Of note is their media section where they link to articles that not only mention the gallery but also outsider art, self-taught art, art brut, etc. from respected news outlets. They also have Fluence Magazine, which is a "quarterly online magazine that serves as a dynamic educational overview of the current dialogue and exhibition of Outsider, Crossover, and Contemporary Art”.

10.) Open Culture
Dedicated to finding the best free cultural and educational media from around the web. Offers free online, movies, e-books, audio books, textbooks, lectures, recordings, art & images, and music; as well as a very expansive tagging  system that is key word searchable. This site is great place to find current updates/alerts in numerous fields and topics; it has the option of receiving the updates through their facebook, twitter, rss feed, and email. While there is no specific “outsider art” tag, the other tags and search feature provide access points to relevant links.

I hope these websites help you in your research. Please let me know if you have any further questions or if there is anything else I may be able to help you with.

Kelsey Sawyer

Reference Librarian

Modern Art Museum