A Haven for Storytellers
February 2008
It isn’t very often that the United States Congress votes unanimously in favor of a piece of legislation, especially one involving art, but that is exactly what occurred in 1993 when it decided that the American Visionary Art Museum (AVAM) in Baltimore should be the country’s official “National Museum, Repository and Education Center for the best in original, self-taught artistry.”AVAM is often noted in Top 10 rankings of American museums by various travel and leisure magazines; in fact, one year the American Association of Museums awarded it the top prize, placing AVAM among the likes of the Met, MoMA, the National Gallery and the Art Institute of Chicago. The driving force behind this successful but unusual endeavor is Rebecca Hoffberger, a Baltimorean who in the early 1990s began to question the view that art museums should only display the creations of professionally trained artists. Hoffberger’s career as a director of development for a hospital that facilitated psychiatric patients’ return to the community planted the seed for this venture. At the hospital, she witnessed the unusual artistic endeavors of the mentally ill and was impressed by their imagination. Some of these individuals worked in the traditional media of pencil, pen-and-ink, tempera paint and oils, while others employed such everyday materials as matchsticks, toothpicks, bottle caps and eggshells.
When AVAM’s initial three-story structure was built, its exterior surface was plain concrete. While plans for a mosaic were part of the original design, its execution was typically innovative: Funded by a Federal grant and individual contributions, students from a nearby high school with a large drop-out rate were enlisted to carry out the project. Eventually some 250 at-risk pupils volunteered for this free, multi-disciplinary arts program. Using fragments of broken mirrors and colored glass, and working from a professionally conceived design, they produced an abstraction suggesting a swirling galaxy of heavenly bodies, its ever-changing appearance influenced by sun, shade or moonlight cast on the curvilinear surface. The glistening façade provides an unexpected element of sparkle and makes the museum a structural stand-out in an area of less-than-distinguished architectural designs. Plans call for the mosaics to cover the building’s entire exterior surface within the next two to three years.
Other features of AVAM’s exterior grab your attention before you pass through the entrance. Local artist David Hess’ 38-foot-wide “Bird’s Nest Balcony” (a structure into which pigeons fly) is installed beneath the fifth-floor windows of an adjacent building, the Jim Rouse Visionary Center. Under Hess’ work is Tom Every’s (a.k.a. Dr. Evermore) 40-foot steel “Phoenix”; in this piece the Wisconsin visionary artist fashioned the piece in the shape of an upright bird with an extended neck stretching skyward. On the ground is an 8-foot mosaic egg by Andrew Logan, a self-taught British artist. Titled “Cosmic Galaxy Egg,” the design’s array of heavenly bodies placed against a dark blue sky was inspired by photographs recorded from the Hubble Space Telescope. And nearby, 76-year-old mechanic Vollis Simpson’s giant, red-white-and-blue whirligig announces the museum’s presence with patriotic fanfare.
Entering the building, visitors reach a circular stairway topped by a skylight, from which the sun’s rays shine down on a life-size sculpture of Icarus, also by Logan. Like the Greek mythological figure who flew too close to the sun with wings fashioned from feathers and wax, this figure’s wings, composed of tiny mirror fragments, appear to dissolve as the piece, suspended on a long cable, turns slowly like a Calder mobile. Below a symbolic ocean of glass fragments by Bob Benson arranged to suggest a wave-like surface awaits Icarus’ fall into the sea.
Clyde Jones, another artist represented in the permanent collection, worked in the Georgia pine forest industry until crushed by a falling tree trunk 25 years ago. During recovery he began to carve, remembering his grandmother’s advice that this is what people who are depressed should do. In the exhibition he is represented by three-dozen wooden animals of every description, most of which are vibrantly painted, even though Jones is color-blind.
Each of the exhibiting artists has a story to tell. Baltimore native Loring Cornish moved to Los Angeles in 1997 and converted his rented apartment into an environment of mosaics, wall pieces and crosses before his landlord evicted him. Returning to Baltimore, he decorated his new surroundings with art that provided him with an environment of faith. Literally every cent went into his artwork; in his room, recreated at the Visionary Art Museum, a wall sculpture spells out the word “FAITH” in 4-foot-high letters composed of thousands of pennies with an overall pattern of nickels. The religious artist says he gains his inspiration from collections of objects. “Lots of things grouped together hit me,” he says. “They say, ‘Make something out of me.’”
Every year a half-dozen of the museum’s galleries are occupied by a mega-exhibit based on a single theme. The current exhibition (through August) is titled “All Faiths Beautiful: From Atheism to Zoroastrianism, Respect for Diversity of Belief.” Arrayed throughout the galleries are hundreds of examples of artistic, religious expression: Christina Varga’s Medieval-type triptych, for example, depicts Mohammed, Jesus and Buddha side-by-side; Preston Geter’s miniature totem pole features carved figures of Elvis Presley, Martin Luther King Jr., Satan and Christ, a juxtaposition that positions the King of Rock ’n’ Roll atop the King of the Civil Rights Movement. As is typical of all of the museum’s exhibits, pithy quotations abound: “Forced worship stinks in God’s nostrils,” Roger Williams (1603–83), Puritan fighter for religious freedom and the founder of religiously free Rhode Island. “My religion is kindness,” His Holiness the Dalai Lama. “Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company,” Mark Twain.
AVAM’s permanent collection contains more than 4,000 works kept in climatized storage and rotated through the museum’s permanent collection gallery, an assemblage including all of the major self-schooled, intuitive outsider artists: Reverend Howard Finster (Georgia), Purvis Young (Florida), Martin Ramírez (Mexico), Albert Louden (Britain), Ted Gordon (California), Minnie Evans (Georgia), Judith Scott (California) and James Harold Jennings (North Carolina).
Hoffberger’s next goal is to transport each Baltimore exhibition to a West Coast venue in Los Angeles, to feature art “From Sea to Shining Sea.” She says, “This would enable us to tour our mega-exhibitions and better capture the creative richness of all the West Coast scientists, writers, humorists in each new exhibition.”
“What is really exciting about the space in AVAM is how it allows you to become intimate with the artwork in a profound way,” says Guha Shankar, folklife specialist at the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. “The works on display give a concrete shape to impermanent things such as dreams, imagination and vision.”
Bennard Perlman is a Baltimore-based author and artist who recently had his 77th one-man show.
American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore
410.244.1900 avam.org