NOMA Exhibit Highlights Self-Taught Genius Through the Ages

News, Reviews

By Fritz Esker | NewOrleans.me

This article originally appeared here

New Orleans is a city that embraces autodidacts and outsider art. As such, it’s an ideal city to host Self-Taught Genius: Treasures from the American Folk Art Museum, which will be on display at the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) throughout May 22.“NOMA has a long history of exhibiting and collecting self-taught art (since 1955),” said Anne Roberts, curatorial assistant to the deputy director at NOMA. “We were one of the first fine arts institutions in the United States to collect self-taught art.”

The collection, consisting of 115 works that date from the American Revolution to modern times, features an enormous variety of art forms, from sculptures to quilts to paintings to models to functional items like pots, chairs, and a clock to a lion from a carousel on Coney Island.

The exhibit tells the story of how the meaning of “self-taught” changed in the United States over time. Through much of early American history, it was common for artists to be self-taught. As time passed and art schools became relatively common, some artists utilized their trade skills to create art.“A lot of the later artists learned different techniques from professional occupations,” said Roberts.

One such artist was Marino Auriti, who used his skills as a mechanic to create “The Encyclopedic Palace of the World” in the 1950s. It’s a towering model for a theoretical museum that would house every human discovery in every field of knowledge.