{"id":613603,"date":"2026-04-29T16:39:33","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T16:39:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/613603\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T16:39:33","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T16:39:33","slug":"reclaiming-the-self-taught-artists-creative-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/613603\/","title":{"rendered":"Reclaiming the Self-Taught Artist\u2019s Creative Identity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>                <a class=\"gh-article-tag\" href=\"https:\/\/hyperallergic.com\/tag\/announcement\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Announcement<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"gh-article-excerpt is-body\">\u201cSelf-Made: A Century of Inventing Artists\u201d at the American Folk Art Museum offers rare first-time views, and always-free access, to over 90 works shifting art historical narratives.<\/p>\n<p>                            <a href=\"https:\/\/hyperallergic.com\/author\/the-american-folk-art-museum\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n                                <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"author-profile-image\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/359756868_677223090462146_8687314692701205772_n.jpg\" alt=\"The American Folk Art Museum\"\/><br \/>\n                            <\/a><\/p>\n<p>        <img decoding=\"async\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Appel.jpg\" alt=\"Reclaiming the Self-Taught Artist\u2019s Creative Identity\"\/><br \/>\n            Nicole Appel,\u00a0\u201cHamburgers, Heels, and High Couture\u201d (2014), colored pencil and graphite on paper, 18 \u00d7 24 inches (photo by Adam Reich, courtesy the American Folk Art Museum, New York, gift of the artist in honor of Deborah Hillburn)<\/p>\n<p>This spring, the American Folk Art Museum (AFAM) presents <a href=\"https:\/\/folkartmuseum.org\/exhibitions\/self-made\/?ref=hyperallergic.com\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Self-Made: A Century of Inventing Artists<\/a>, a major exhibition that takes a critical look at the historical definition of the \u201cself-taught artist\u201d in the United States through the unique lens of authorship, agency, and self-representation. Spanning the early 20th century to today, the show features 90 works around three key strategies: self-portraiture, alter egos, and autobiography.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Drawn largely from the Museum\u2019s collection, the presentation includes paintings, drawings, sculptures, videos, photographs, and artist books, many on view for the first time. The exhibition builds on AFAM\u2019s Rethinking Biography reparative cataloguing initiative, which seeks to foreground the voice and positionality of each artist and place their work at the center of interpretation.<\/p>\n<p>Works by Henry Darger, Cl\u00e9mentine Hunter, and Mart\u00edn Ram\u00edrez are presented alongside those of international figures such as Alo\u00efse Corbaz and Adolf W\u00f6lfli and contemporary artists like Nicole Appel, Susan Janow, and Joe Coleman, creating a dynamic dialogue across geographies and lived experiences.<\/p>\n<p>By centering self-invention as both method and message, Self-Made offers a timely, inclusive, and revelatory rethinking of artistic identity.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/folkartmuseum.org\/?ref=hyperallergic.com\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">American Folk Art Museum<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n<p>To learn more, visit <a href=\"https:\/\/folkartmuseum.org\/exhibitions\/self-made\/?ref=hyperallergic.com\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">folkartmuseum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Announcement \u201cSelf-Made: A Century of Inventing Artists\u201d at the American Folk Art Museum offers rare first-time views, and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":613604,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88],"class_list":["post-613603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=613603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613603\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/613604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}