Inside the Museum, Outside the Art World: Understanding a History of Self-Taught Art in the US

Join Richard Meyer, Robert and Ruth Halperin Professor in Art History, and Aleesa Alexander, Assistant Curator of American Art, for a conversation about self-taught and "outsider" artists in relation to the history of modern art in the United States. Together they will address issues of amateurism, formal training, and institutional systems of aesthetic judgment, inclusion, and exclusion. The conversation will focus on the life and work of Morris Hirshfield (1872-1946), a Brooklyn tailor and slipper manufacturer who is one of the only self-taught artists to have been given a solo show at MoMA, and Thornton Dial (1928-2016), an Alabama steelworker whose work now hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The conversation will take place in the Pigott Family Gallery, where works by notable self-taught artists, including Lonnie Holley and Thornton Dial, are currently on display in the exhibition, "The Medium Is the Message: Art since 1950.” Meyer and Alexander will link the historical artists they discuss with the contemporary examples of self-taught art on view at the Cantor.

IMAGE: Thornton Dial, Old Dreams, 2000. Bedding, clothing, found materials, splash zone compound, enamel, and spray paint on canvas. Private collection.