Portrait of the Artist as… May 24, 2026

 I have always been interested in ‘self-taught’ artists’ work. There is something deeply intimate about self-taught artists—those who come to art not through institutions, though through instinct, necessity, and an unrelenting inner drive to make something visible. The work carries a different kind of weight. It is not polished for approval or filtered through theory before it arrives; it is lived, and that presence is felt almost immediately in Self-Made: A Century of Inventing Artists at the American Folk Art Museum. There is a closeness to it all, a human immediacy that feels grounding rather than performative, and at times a certain grit that lends the work its honesty. This exhibition that takes a critical look at the historical definition of the “self-taught artist” in the United States through the lens of self-representation. Self-Made is the first sustained museum exploration of artistic self-fashioning by artists who worked outside conventional art-world systems, including those historically excluded due to race, gender, disability, and other deviations from normative power structures. The exhibition challenges longstanding assumptions, positioning these artists not at the margins, but as central contributors to the story of modern and contemporary art. What does it mean to make yourself an artist when no one has formally granted you that space? That question moves through the exhibition with a quiet persistence. Self-portraits, alter egos, and autobiographical works feel less like stylistic choices and more like acts of authorship and presence. Drawn largely from the Museum’s collection, the presentation includes paintings, drawings, sculptures, videos, photographs, and artist books, many on view for the first time. The American Folk Art Museum is located at 2 Lincoln Square, diagonally across from Lincoln Center. As always, admission to the Museum is free, underscoring its commitment to broad public access. My own ‘self-portrait can be see above the title photo today. I did that painting when I was a Freshman at RISD a very long time ago. I still have it hanging in my apartment. It reminds me of the young artist I was before four years of art school education.