An Alternative Canon: Art Dealers Collecting Outsider Art

Following in the footsteps of such pioneering art dealers as Phyllis Kind (1933-2018) and Sidney Janis (1896-1989), more and more contemporary galleries are now exhibiting Outsider Art. Kind championed both contemporary art and the work of self-taught artists at her galleries in Chicago and New York, and Janis, who represented twentieth-century giants like Pollock, De Kooning, Rothko and Guston, brought attention to American “primitive” painters like John Kane and Morris Hirshfield in his seminal 1942 book They Taught Themselves. Today’s dealers and gallery directors are also adding works by untrained artists to their personal collections.