Folk and Self-Taught Art

Permanent event at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, United States

27 May 2017

Folk and Self-Taught Art. Courtesy of High Museum of Art

The High is dedicated to supporting and collecting works by Southern artists and is distinguished as the first general museum in North America to have a full-time curator devoted to folk and self-taught art.

The nucleus of the folk art collection is the T. Marshall Hahn Collection, donated in 1996, and Judith Alexander's gift of 130 works by Atlanta artist Nellie Mae Rowe.

Other artists the High has collected in depth in this field include the Reverend Howard Finster, Bill Traylor, Thornton Dial, Ulysses Davis, Sam Doyle, William Hawkins, Mattie Lou O'Kelley, and Louis Monza. The collection of almost 800 objects also boasts superb examples by renowned artists from beyond the South, such as Henry Darger, Martín Ramírez, and Joseph Yoakum.

High Museum of Art

With more than 15,000 works of art in its permanent collection, the High has an extensive anthology of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American and decorative art; significant holdings of European paintings; a growing collection of African American art; and burgeoning collections of modern and contemporary art, photography, folk and self taught art, and African art.

Museum profile

Location

Atlanta, United States

Founded in

1949