The interior hallways of the American Visionary Art Museum

Inside the American Visionary Art Museum. Photo by Shawn Levin

The American Visionary Art Museum (AVAM) is nestled like a glittering precious stone in the Federal Hill neighborhood of Baltimore. There are no white walls and solemn security guards telling children to quiet downward. The souvenir shop stocks practical jokes and novelty sunglasses. In the permanent drove, a bedazzled bed frame featuring Alfred E. Neuman sits direct across from the sculptural magnum opus of a terminally ill mental patient, which was carved from a unmarried piece of applewood. Neither piece of work seems out of place. Equally the nation's premier museum for visionary art, AVAM has made it a fundamental practice to pair exuberance with didactics when contemplating and curating life's mysteries. In the procedure, it has elevated self-taught artists inside the American canon, and showed but how much fun fine art museums tin be.

Visionary art goes by many names: cocky-taught art, outsider art, and its original French counterpart, art brüt. AVAM defines visionary art as work created past self-taught artists, whose "works arise from an innate personal vision that revels foremost in the creative act itself."

The museum itself grew from the personal vision of founder Rebecca Hoffberger, who had no previous museum experience before she established AVAM. Hoffberger left her hometown of Baltimore at age 16 to written report nether acclaimed mime Marcel Marceau in Paris, founded her own ballet company by age 21, established field hospitals in Nigeria, and spent several years practicing traditional healing practices in rural Mexico (all while raising ii daughters). By 1984, Hoffberger had moved back to Baltimore, where she was working as the development manager of People Encouraging People, a nonprofit providing transformative mental wellness rehabilitation at Sinai Infirmary.

A beaded headboard depicting Alfred E Neuman

What Me Worry? Bed by Patty Kuzbida in Baltimore'southward American Visionary Art Museum. Photo past Sophia Salganicoff

Hoffberger was intrigued by the intuitive creativity flowing from her patients, especially the art they created despite the lack of any formal preparation. "I'm very interested in where a fresh thought comes from," said Hoffberger.

At the time, there was all the same little interest surrounding self-taught artists in the The states, and only a dozen or so visionary or outsider art spaces in existence worldwide. "For a long time before we opened, the outsider art movement was really controlled almost exclusively by iv major galleries and they tended to show the aforementioned top 12 artists amongst them, and the prices went up, upward, and up," said Hoffberger. Undeterred, Hoffberger and her married man LeRoy traveled the earth learning almost visionary art, and opened the doors to AVAM in 1995. In 2004, they doubled their campus to its current 1.one acre "urban wonderland."

Today, people come from all over the world to see the museum and learn from its unique presentational and organizational construction. There are now more than than a dozen museums, galleries, and art spaces centered around visionary art in the United States, largely in response to the success AVAM has seen. Role of the museum's success is that, despite running on a budget that is a fraction of its local counterparts, AVAM is the only museum in Baltimore with rising omnipresence rates.

One of the reasons that Hoffberger believes her museum has go so successful is because of its accessibility. "I had the greatest edge of non going through an fine art history education," she said. "You don't want to write for your peers who went through the aforementioned linguistic educational system. You want to think about how y'all express and make connections with regular people walking in the door."

An egg shaped sculpture mosaiced with mirrored pieces

The sculpture Cosmic Galaxy Egg by Andrew Logan is located outside of the American Visionary Art Museum. Photo courtesy of American Visionary Art Museum

The museum curates and presents art in a format that transcends intergenerational barriers that often plague traditional museums, hoping that everyone from 5 to 85 will acquire or see something they never have encountered prior to visiting AVAM. Primary among its educational goals is to "expand the definition of a worthwhile life."

The Visionary Art Museum is not about, "'Let me tell you why this is an important era in art,'" said Hoffberger. Instead, she said, "Information technology's very oriented to wonder; what it is to exist a human, meaning all the negative traits that human being beings have long had and struggled with as well as their all-time characteristics."

The unadulterated testaments to joy, sadness, and humor hanging from the walls of the museum are not tempered by hyper-conceptual creative trends popular within merely not necessarily outside of the art world. Almanac showroom themes range from this year'due south Parenting: An Art without a Manual to previous exhibits similar Race, Form & Gender: Three things that contribute '0' to CHARACTER, because existence a schmuck is an equal opportunity for everyone!

Although Hoffberger oft has a hand in exhibition curation, there are no permanent curators on staff, assuasive guest curators to contribute their ain unique voice to the already unique museum. Visiting curators have ranged from Simpsons creator Matt Groening to Ariana Huffington to Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Due to the relatively pocket-size size of the budget, staff members often wear many hats over the class of a yr. At other museums, about large-scale temporary exhibits take years to plan, but according to Hoffberger, AVAM staff take always been "on fourth dimension and on budget" with their grand exhibitions, putting them together in roughly nine months. This is even more impressive when you consider that the majority of the administrative staff, like Hoffberger, has no traditional background in museum studies, although most have feel in the arts.

While AVAM has significantly legitimized and raised the profile of visionary art in the United States, its contributions to the local customs of Baltimore are also significant. "More urban museums nowadays as fortresses saying, 'Stay out, nosotros have valuable things inside,'" said Hoffberger. "Ours has always been a wonderland that you come upward to at 3am and hug the Cosmic Milky way Egg outside and you could walk on our belongings or you could skateboard hither and be welcome to do and so."

A blonde woman gestures to text on a museum wall

American Visionary Art Museum founder Rebecca Hoffberger at the entrance of the museum. Photo by Sophia Salganicoff

AVAM demonstrates this through an extensive commitment to educational activity and grassroots community initiatives, including the famed Baltimore Kinetic Sculpture Race, its annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Mean solar day celebration, apprenticeship programs, neighborhood picture show nights, and more.

Social justice and grassroots instruction inform almost every facet of the museum, including the exhibition themes, community outreach events, and even the mosaic adorning the primary building. The mosaic, titled Shining Walls / Shining Youth is the event of the largest apprenticeship plan for incarcerated or at-risk youths in the country, according to the museum. It is dedicated to LeRoy Hoffberger, who passed abroad in 2013. The plan "encourages teamwork, pride in creating something both exquisite and lasting, and results in existent job skills, useful for the rest of their lives," according to the museum. This project, along with the museum'southward other community initiatives, has created a deep sense of respect and interchange betwixt the Visionary Fine art Museum and the customs in which it exists.

Hoffberger recalls the doubtfulness cast in her direction during the beginning stages of AVAM, but was willing to have the adventure of following her intuition to nowadays those artists who had been marginalized by more conventional art museums. Though AVAM may lack the size and budget of other art museums, its touch cannot exist denied.

Or as Hoffberger quoted friend Dame Anita Roddick, "If y'all think you're as well pocket-size to make a departure, attempt going to bed with a musquito."

Sophia Salganicoff was an intern in the NEA Office of Public Affairs in fall 2018.