These artists don’t typically have the MFA degrees that are required for representation at blue-chip galleries. They are more likely to have members of the clergy, or to have been firefighters or houseless. But as this fair shows, these artists who are just worthy of study as the ones that pass through the nation’s top art schools.

Those who show at this fair have spent decades working to bring to light these makers, who historically have not made into museums. Their work is now paying off.

During the fair’s VIP preview day on Thursday, ARTnews spoke with several exhibitors about the artists they brought to the fair this year.

Billed as “the only fair devoted to self-taught art, art brut, and outsider art,” the upcoming edition will feature galleries from 32 cities, among them are stalwarts in the field, like Cavin-Morris Gallery (of New York), Fleisher/Ollman Gallery (Philadelphia), Carl Hammer Gallery (Chicago), and Ricco/Maresca Gallery (New York). Likewise, the fair will include nine first-time exhibitors, including Montreal’s Galerie Hugues Charbonneau, Baltimore’s New Door Creative, Nashville’s Elephant Gallery, and the Ruffed Grouse Gallery of Narrowsburg, New York.

As with past editions, next year’s Outsider Art Fair will include two curated sections. Titled “Beat Art Work: Power of the Gaze,” the first is to be organized by legendary American poet Anne Waldman and will include visual art by poets like William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Diane di Prima, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Joanne Kyger.

The second curated section will celebrate the 50th anniversary of long-time exhibitor Creative Growth Art Center, the Oakland-based nonprofit that is the longest running organization of its kind, dedicated to supporting the work of artists with disabilities. Tom di Maria, Creative Growth’s director emeritus, will organize the presentation, titled “Expanding the Canon: 50 Years of Creative Growth”; it will feature never-before-exhibited works by artists like Dwight Mackintosh, Donald Mitchell, William Scott, Monica Valentine, Aurie Ramirez, William Tyler, and Judith Scott. In October, the San Francisco Museum of Art announced that it had acquired 114 works by 10 Creative Growth–affiliated artists and that it would mount an exhibition of the acquisitions next spring.

“For anyone who’s ever been to Creative Growth, every day feels like a celebration,” Outsider Art Fair owner Andrew Edlin told ARTnews. “And Tom Di Maria, in particular, deserves tremendous accolades for his stewardship—guiding these artists on their journeys from [founders Elias Katz and Florence Ludins-Katz’s] garage to the Venice Biennale. With the major acquisition and exhibition plans by SFMOMA, Creative Growth and its artists have solidified their place in art history. OAF is always delighted and takes pride when the art world embraces work that we have been championing these last 32 years.”

The full exhibitor list follows below.

Filled with both bewitching art and visitors and dealers to match, the fair is always a fun ride and this year is no exception, with some truly exceptional works of art on offer—many of which are at accessible prices.

Below a look at the best booths at the 2023 Outsider Art Fair, which runs until March 5.

Among the galleries taking part are stalwarts in the field of representing and supporting the work of self-taught artists, like Cavin-Morris Gallery of New York, Fleisher/Ollman Gallery of Philadelphia, Carl Hammer Gallery of Chicago, and Ricco/Maresca Gallery of New York. There will be 12 first-time exhibitors at the fair, including Feheley Fine Arts of Toronto, Kishka Gallery of Vermont, and Emilia Galatis Projects of Australia.

The fair will also continue to include a significant number of booths dedicated to workshops and ateliers who work with artists who have with developmental, intellectual, and physical disabilities. Among those are Arts of Life/Circle Contemporary (Chicago), ArTech Collective (The Bronx, New York), Creative Growth Art Center (Oakland), LAND Gallery (Brooklyn, New York), Project Onward (Chicago), Pure Vision Arts (New York), and SAGE Studio (Austin).

Andrew Edlin, the fair’s owner, said he expects this year’s edition to continue what people have come to expect from the Outsider Art Fair, which is now in its 31st year. “It doesn’t look like a commodities exchange,” he said. “People are always discovering things, finding something unexpected. Part of that is these dealers never got into it because they saw dollar signs. They just are passionate about the work, and we’re in some ways the only game in town.”

The fair also announced that Sofía Lanusse has been appointed as the director of the New York fair; she was previously director of the Outsider Art Fair’s Paris edition.

“The fair has done a great job in terms of presenting self-taught, folk, naïve, and outsider art already, so my goal will be continuing to give all these terms a space to show the value of this work and these artists within the contemporary art world and the whole world,” Lanusse said in an interview.

This year’s OAF Curated Space will be organized by Randall Poster, the Grammy Award–winning music producer and supervisor known for his close association with Wes Anderson, as well as his work on Skyfall, The Wolf of Wall Street, and The Irishman, among other projects. The collaboration with Poster is also a deeply personal one as he is a childhood friend of Edlin’s.

Poster’s section, titled “We Are Birds,” will feature a mix of work by contemporary and self-taught artists, all of whom feature bird imagery in their work. Selected artists include Fred Tomaselli, Bill Traylor, William Edmondson, Minnie Evans, and William Hawkins. The section is a nod to the collaborative project that Poster founded during the pandemic called The Birdsong Project to benefit the National Audubon Society; it recently released a 20-L.P. box set filled with art and over 200 original music compositions and poetry.

“There’s certainly no shortage of artists working with bird imagery,” Edlin said. “We’re always trying to expand our horizons for our audience, from the contemporary art world to people from the music and entertainment spheres, as well as the Audubon Society’s tremendous group of supporters.”

Additionally, a special presentation will be dedicated to a series of eight paintings by artist and architect Paul Laffoley, titled “The Life and Death of Elvis Presley: A Suite” (1995). The artist’s life and work will also be the subject of a talk during the fair’s run.

“His work is so revered—there’s something very mysterious and inscrutable about it,” Edlin said of Laffoley. “The work has a visceral effect on us. It draws us in with its power. He’s crossed all boundaries of the art world.”

As with past editions, Edlin said he anticipates the fair to showcase just how important self-taught and outsider artists have been to art history.

“We’re continuing to push the boundaries,” he said. “We’re proud to illustrate the powerful influence that this genre of art has on the mainstream art world. It took a devoted culture of enthusiasts that do the fair to establish a market for these artists in the first place. I think those boundaries and definitions between the mainstream art world and outsider art are continuing to gray.”

The full exhibitor list follows below.

Aarne Anton / Nexus Singularity (New York, NY)
Bill Arning Exhibitions (Houston, TX)
Art Sales & Research (New York, NY)
ArTech Collective (Bronx, NY)
Arts of Life/Circle Contemporary (Chicago, IL)
James Barron (Kent, CT)
bG (Santa Monica, CA)
Norman Brosterman (New York, NY)
Cavin-Morris Gallery (New York, NY)
Creative Growth Art Center (Oakland, CA)
Creativity Explored (San Francisco, CA)
Sarah Crown (New York, NY)
Daniel/Oliver (Brooklyn, NY)
Alexander Dijulio (New York, NY)
Dutton (New York, NY)
Andrew Edlin Gallery (New York, NY)
Donald Ellis (New York, NY)
Feheley Fine Arts (Toronto, Canada)
Fleisher/Ollman Gallery (Philadelphia, PA)
Forest Grove Preserve, Inc. (Sandersville, GA)
Fountain House Gallery (New York, NY)
Emilia Galatis Projects (Australia)
Carl Hammer (Chicago, IL)
Marion Harris (New York, NY)
Hill Gallery (Birmingham, MI)
Hirschl & Adler (New York, NY)
Kishka Gallery (White River Junction, VT)
koelsch gallery (Houston, TX)
Yukiko Koide Presents (Tokyo, Japan)
Slavko Kopač Association (Pula, Croatia)
Kunstraum (Nuremberg, Germany)
LAND Gallery (Brooklyn, NY)
Jennifer Lauren Gallery (Manchester, UK)
Pol Lemétais (Saint Sever du Moustier, France)
Lindsay Gallery (Columbus, OH)
Joshua Lowenfels (New York, NY)
Magic Markings (Brooklyn, NY)
Mason Fine Arts (Atlanta, GA)
New Discretions (New York, NY)
North Pole Studio/ Booklyn (Portland, OR)
The Pardee Collection (Iowa City, IA)
Portrait Society Gallery of Contemporary Art (Milwaukee, WI)
Steven S. Powers (New York, NY)
Project Onward (Chicago, IL)
Pure Vision Arts (New York, NY)
Ricco/Maresca (New York, NY)
SAGE Studio (Austin, TX)
Shelter (New York, NY)
SHRINE (New York, NY)
The Silo (Milanville, PA)
Stellarhighway (Brooklyn, NY)
Stewart Gallery (Boise, ID)
The Valley (Taos, NM)
Valley House (Dallas, TX)
Winter Works on Paper (New York, NY)
ZQ (New York, NY)
Zurcher Gallery (New York, NY)

Center for Creative Works, Wynnewood, PA
Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery, London, UK

Around 65 galleries came out this year, which marks the fair’s 30th anniversary. Many brought new works or art from overlooked outsiders well past due for acclaim. At Andrew Edlin Gallery’s booth, for example, visitors packed in to see a suspended self-portrait by Tom Duncan and an atomic collage by the recently rediscovered cigar-roller-turned-artist Felipe Jesus Consalvos.

The veteran galleries have bigger booths by the entrance, and most brought the masters: Martín Ramírez, Henry Darger, Joseph E. Yoakum, William Hawkins. The extra space invites the crowd to slow down and really study the works. In particular, a book made of soot and saliva by James Castle, the enigmatic Idahoan, at Hirschl & Adler Modern benefits from close viewing.

Below is a look at some of the best booths at the New York fair, which runs through Sunday, March 6.

Among the fair’s offerings presented by some 65 galleries from all over, a special booth titled “Maps and Legends: Featuring Works from the Collection of Michael Stipe” includes paintings, drawings, and sculptures by Thornton Dial, St. EOM, Dilmus Hall, Bessie Harvey, Howard Finster, R.A. Miller, Royal Robertson, Juanita Rogers, Jimmy Lee Sudduth, and other artists engaged by Stipe beginning in his early days as a student at the University of Georgia. The exhibition was curated by Phillip March Jones, founder of the new March Gallery in New York’s East Village and formerly a director at Andrew Edlin Gallery, the namesake shop of the Outsider Art Fair’s director. (Jones also founded Institute 193, a nonprofit art space in Lexington, Kentucky.)

While he was working on gathering works for the exhibition, Stipe spoke with ARTnews from his home in Athens, Georgia, about his history with different kinds of folk art, his visual work with R.E.M., and what he learned from teachers he still reveres.

ARTnews: What initially interested about the prospect of showing outsider artwork from your collection? What was the genesis of the idea?

Michael Stipe: I’ve had a long interest in what we would call outsider artists or untrained artists. I grew up here in Athens, Georgia, surrounded by them and integrated that into the work that I did as the visual deputy for R.E.M., bringing work from several people who are part of the show into the artwork for different albums over the years. Andrew Edlin Gallery [run by the Outsider Art Fair’s owner] is really close to my apartment in New York, and I’ve been stopping by for years to see what he’s up to. Andrew approached me because he knew I had a collection. I don’t think of myself—and never have thought of myself—as a collector, but I have bought things over the years that I found inspiring and wanted to live with. That became, over the course of my long life, quite a collection. The idea of being able to share it with people is really thrilling for me.

ARTnews: The title for the Outsider Art Fair show is “Maps and Legends.” What resonates most about that reference for you?

Stipe: That was [curator Phillip March Jones’s] idea. The presentation is centered mostly on Southeastern artists, people I either met or whose work I came in contact with in the 1980s and ’90s. “Maps and Legends” is a reference to the Southeast and clearly a reference to an R.E.M. song that I wrote way back—I don’t remember which record it’s on, but it’s one of the early ones…

ARTnew: It’s on Fables of the Reconstruction.

Stipe: That makes sense—that’s in keeping thematically with that body of work.

ARTnews: How far back do you trace your interest in this kind of folk art or whatever we might choose to call it? What was the very beginning of it?

Stipe: It’s what was available to me, not living in a city center. Traveling through cities, museums and galleries were available to me going back to 1979. I distinctly remember seeing a Peter Hujar photograph in a small show that I went to in New York that radically altered the way I thought about portraiture, the human body, portrayals of sexuality, and what have you. But my teachers at art school, at the University of Georgia, were very interested in the outsider artists who were available to us, like Howard Finster and St. EOM (Eddie Owens Martin) and Dilmus Hall and Billy Lemming (though I never met him—the one time I tried to meet him, he ran inside when he saw me; he was quite shy, and he wouldn’t answer when I knocked on the door). I never met Juanita Rogers or Bessie Harvey, but I wish I had.

ARTnews: Who were some of your early teachers in this context?

Stipe: The interest really came from Andy Nasisse, who taught sculpture at the University of Georgia. He had a huge collection of outsider artists’ work here in Athens. I would go to his house and ask him questions about the stuff he had. He and I traveled to Mexico in 1987, all around the Yucatan Peninsula with Jeremy Ayers. The three of us traveled around for three weeks and visited artists and Toltec and Aztec ruins. I found artifacts on the ground—it was insane.

Through Andy Nasisse, I met Jim Herbert—he was not as interested in outsider artists, but when we became acquainted with R.A. Miller, he followed the band up to Gainesville [Georgia] to R.A.’s house, which was on this hill with all these whirligigs on it, like hundreds of whirligigs. At that point R.A. was just selling them locally. Jim followed the band up there to shoot footage for a video for us to turn into MTV. At the time, we were not creating video content that they were asking for. We just said, ‘Fuck you, we’re going to do our own thing.’ Jim was so inspired by the footage that he got that he did an entire album-side-long film called Left of Reckoning, which you can find on YouTube. It’s very beautiful. We decided to include it as a part of the [Outsider Art Fair exhibition] because it shows this environment at its absolute peak, with four handsome guys in our mid-20s wandering around. It’s a beautiful Jim Herbert film. I’m so thrilled to have been able to collaborate with Jim as a filmmaker on many R.E.M. videos, but that one in particular is stunning.

ARTnews: Did you send it to MTV?

Stipe: Oh, yeah. And they showed it on the show on Sunday night that that was for indie music…

ARTnews: 120 Minutes?

Stipe: Yeah, I think it was. They wouldn’t show it with their regular programing—it was too weird for them.

ARTnews: Who were some other formative influences, outsider-art-wise?

Stipe: There was Art Rosenbaum, who was also a teacher of mine. Art and his wife Margo are renowned throughout the folk-music world for having made field recordings all around the South, including The McIntosh County Shouters: Slave Shout Songs from the Coast of Georgia, which is one of the most stunning field recordings ever made. Their interests in that continue to this day. Margo is also an astonishing photographer—she recently released a self-published book that I’ve been looking through, and it’s marvelous. It’s unbelievable the mixture of people she photographed. There are all these legendary people going back to the 1960s that she and Art had access to—Elaine de Kooning and James Baldwin among many others.

I also met Tom Patterson. He’s from North Carolina, and he traveled all through the Southeast; he would spend time in Athens and use it as a kind of base to go visit people like St. EOM, Howard Finster, R.A. Miller, J.B. Murray, and Athens’s own Dilmus Hall. And then Roger Manley, who is now the director of North Carolina State University’s Gregg Museum of Art & Design. I think the thing that all these people have in common is that their understanding of what these artists were doing allowed them to put it alongside contemporary artists who were trained, or modern artists who were exalted, and see the parallels between, for instance, a Jasper Johns and a Billy Lemming, or a Duchamp and a Leroy Person. They saw these incredible connections by not separating artists into “went to Yale, studied art” vs. “grew up in a shack, never had electricity.” They acknowledged that these are people who, for whatever reason, had to create, and this was what was available to them, either through the mediums that they chose or the education that they had or did not have. That’s something that was profoundly important to my art education: being able to look at something like a Leroy Person and put it in a timeline with a contemporary or modern artist who I also appreciated.

ARTnews: Who among these artists were you the closest with? Would it have been Howard Finster?

Stipe: Yeah, we had a true friendship. I believe it began when he came and gave a speech at the State Botanical Garden of Georgia in Athens. I went as a student. I think Andy Nasisse recommended it and said, ‘Oh, you have to check out this artist. He’s amazing.’ That introduced Howard to the entire Athens punk-rock scene. And then R.A. Miller I had a friendship with. I went to his house time and again and would just hang out with him. He’d show me his chickens and we’d talk about how funny they looked. I really loved that guy. He was he was an incredible, warm, gentle, very, very smart and very funny human being. And he was a preacher at one point: I come from a line of preachers, so I have a deep appreciation for that. You know, the kind of the levity of humor that comes men of God. Howard had that as well.

ARTnews: What was your relationship with Howard Finster like?

Stipe: Spending time with Howard was like spending time with me when I’ve had a double espresso. You just basically sat and listened. There was no real exchange—he was just jacked all the time. And he had “the sugars,” which was diabetes; he would have a couple coffees with sugar and just go. If you could connect the dots and follow along, then you were doing well. With R.A. there was much more of a give-and-take, and he understood that we were artists who were doing our own thing through music and working with them through the through the graphic art that was going along with the music. They understood that we were out in the world and that their work was going to be seen by a wider audience because of my interest. I was thrilled to be able to offer that to these artists who were doing incredible work and were sweet people.

ARTnews: Did they have did they ever share their thoughts on the band or the music you were making at the time?

Stipe: They had younger people around them who had a clearer understanding of what we were doing and where we sat in the lineage of American music. I think they had an understanding of it, but I don’t know that they sat around and listened to it.

ARTnews: A drawing by Juanita Rogers features on the back cover of R.E.M.’s Life Rich Pageant, and Howard Finster’s work features in the “Radio Free Europe” video and also the Reckoning cover art. Was there other such stuff that figured in the R.E.M. visual sphere?

Stipe: There was there was an early merchandise item that we sold that was completely designed by Howard, a handkerchief with a beautiful drawing of his that will be in the show. It shows the four of us, and it’s the size of a record album—12 by 12. It’s a very sweet and funny Howard piece.

ARTnews: Oh wow. Can you find any of those out in the world?

Stipe: I don’t think you could…

ARTnews: Here’s one on eBay, for $349.99.  

Stipe: Good Lord. Well… [Editor’s note: The lot available at the time is no longer online.] Our friendship with Howard I’m really proud of. “Radio Free Europe” was our first music video and we were like, “We’re not going to do what MTV wants—we’re going to do what we want.” And what we wanted was to go to Howard’s Paradise Garden and create a little narrative there. So that’s what we did.

ARTnews: Some of the work in the Outsider Art Fair is for sale. What made you want to part with it after all this time?

Stipe: I’m at that point in my life where I’m getting rid of things and rethinking belongings and material things. I’m reexamining and rethinking what I have around me. I’m clearing out a bunch of stuff, getting rid of a lot of things.

ARTnews: You’ve spent a lot of time in Athens during the pandemic. Is there something about being in the South that makes you commune with or think about this kind of work differently than you might elsewhere?

Stipe: I think there’s an acceptance and understanding across the South that might surprise people. For people who take their own path and people who choose to live on the fringe or to follow certain urges, it seems like there’s an acceptance here that is unwritten and [different from] other issues and other concerns that are often associated with the South. There’s a tolerance within what we think of as a very intolerant place for people to be who they are and to allow for that, and that’s something that I don’t think has ever been really fully understood. I feel like I have to defend the South quite often, and sometimes I’m deeply embarrassed by the choices that are made by people here. But then I remind myself that, you know, the state of Georgia alone gave us Jessye Norman, James Brown, and the B-52s. Gosh, that’s not bad. Throw in Jimmy Carter and Martin Luther King Jr., and Georgia’s looking pretty good, along with a lot of a lot of people who are quite easy to disregard or hate.

An alternative response is to say that there’s something in the water here in Athens. I don’t know how to explain what it is, but there’s something about here. It might be that we are at the end of a mountain range—a big part of Georgia and the Carolinas is the end of a huge, very old mountain range moving into the Piedmont. There’s just something very special here. I can’t put my finger on it. I don’t know what it is, but I feel it, and it’s very strong. For someone who has never felt at home anywhere, this place as a base for me is profoundly important. And I feel like that strongly resonates in the work of a lot of the people we’re talking about.

On Monday, the Outsider Art Fair, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, announced that its upcoming event, slated for February 3–6 at the Metropolitan Pavilion in Manhattan, will be moved to March 3–6. In a statement, the fair’s owner, Andrew Edlin, called the delay a “difficult but sensible decision.”

Breakthrough infections soared in New York beginning in late 2021, with another surge anticipated after the holiday season. In late December, New York’s Winter Show postponed its 2022 fair originally scheduled for January 21–30. New spring dates have yet to be announced.

The India Art Fair said that it would reschedule its 2022 edition in New Delhi from February 3–6 to April 28–May 1. The decision came after the Indian government placed strict restrictions on cultural festivals and business events in the hope of halting the spread of the variant through the country, which suffered a devastating second wave of Covid-19 in spring 2021. IAF is the largest art fair in Southeast Asia, with 75 galleries and institutions scheduled to exhibit at its 2022 edition as of December.   

Meanwhile, the European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) in Maastricht, the Netherlands, postponed its in-person edition for the third straight year, with organizers citing “the global volatility of COVID-19” in a statement issued in December. TEFAF has been among the most Covid-cautious fairs since dozens of cases were linked to its 2020 show. When that edition was mounted in Maastricht in February 2020, just before lockdown, organizers were accused of being slow to respond to the outbreak. The fair’s 2021 Maastricht edition was later postponed, then canceled outright.

The London Art Fair, the U.K.’s first major art event of 2022, has decided to postpone its 2022 edition, originally slated to open on January 19. The fair is now scheduled to run from April 19–23 at the Business Design Centre.

“Whilst we could have continued with the event as planned within government guidelines, we are keen to deliver the best possible Fair for our galleries, sponsors, partners and visitors. We have worked with our exhibiting galleries from the UK and internationally to make this decision, prioritising the wellbeing of all of our attendees,” organizers said in a statement.

Some art fairs planned for the coming months are moving forward as planned—with new health measures. San Francisco’s FOG Design + Art fair will return to the Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture on January 20 after canceling in 2021 due to the pandemic. Proof of vaccination is mandatory, and attendees to its gala night will be required to test negative for the coronavirus.

The LA Art Show, opening January 19 at the Los Angeles Convention Center, will require vaccination cards and PCR tests for all visitors entering the fair. A spokesperson for the show told ARTnews, “We’ve been working closely with the convention center, the city of Los Angeles, and the CDC to make sure all protocols are in place.”

[Updated on January 6.]

Slated for February 3–6 at the Metropolitan Pavilion in Manhattan, the fair will feature special thematic offerings including a major presentation of psychedelic art curated by artist Fred Tomaselli and an offering of works from the collection of Michael Stipe, who as a member of R.E.M. championed outsider artists from the American South such as Reverend Howard Finster.

Other thematic shows will include a survey of self-taught artist and clay animator Bruce Bickford organized by the painter Eric White and filmmaker Aaron Guadamuz, as well as “Beyond Genres: Self-Taught Artists Making Contemporary Art,” curated by writer and artist Paul Laster. Past iterations of the fair have presented only one or two curated booths, as opposed to the four more extensive ones planned for next year.

“I wanted to honor the fair’s history but, at the same time, I am conscious of continuing to evolve,” Outsider Art Fair owner Andrew Edlin said of the anniversary edition’s planned slate. “This year we’re doing that with our biggest focus on special curated exhibitions. By far, more square footage will be taken up by those than ever before, and that flows out of what we learned during the shutdown.”

While an edition of the fair was presented last winter, the Outsider Art Fair—like so many other enterprises of the sort—had to improvise to stay fully active and engaged. Among its extracurricular offerings was “Super-Rough,” a group exhibition organized in June by artist Takashi Murakami in collaboration with a number of Outsider’s participating galleries in a space in SoHo.

“That was beautifully curated, and it created a really powerful message and effect for all our visitors,” Edlin said of the show. “A fair can only be so tight curatorially when you have 60-some-odd dealers doing their own thing. But that made me think we can continue to evolve and do things that are a little outside the norm of the commercial art fair yet still have the works be at least to some degree for sale—because, after all, an art fair is a commercial enterprise.”

Alex Grey, St Albert and the LSD Revelation Revolution (2006), to be featured in “Field Trip: Psychedelic Solution, 1986-1995.”

One idea Edlin conceived for the upcoming fair is “Field Trip: Psychedelic Solution, 1986-1995,” which he handed over to Tomaselli, whose own artwork shares special affinities with the lineage of psychedelia. The exhibition will take over three booths’ worth of space and feature work by artists including Bruce Conner, Robert Crumb, Alex Grey, and Rick Griffin. (Plus Grace Slick: “When she was tripping, she did a painting on a bass-drum head,” Edlin said. “We have that painting.”)

The presentation of work from Stipe’s collection amassed in and around Athens, Georgia, will be organized by Phillip March Jones, a former director of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation and the founder of Institute 193, a nonprofit art space and publisher based in Lexington, Kentucky.

“There’s an ongoing conversation about outsider art,” Edlin said. “And these curated exercises will spark contextual ways to keep pushing the boundaries, keep making it fresh, and keep getting people excited—for different constituencies who want to come to the fair.”

There is nothing in this exhibition to remind one of the hyperreality of the screen, or of the slick surfaces of consumer goods. Human and animal bodies are reimagined in ways that are sometimes disturbing, but never less than astonishing. Found materials, from buttons and dolls to wood, wire, glue, and yarn, are repurposed to extraordinary effect. Root Carved Dog by an unknown artist, for example, is a creature with body made out of a twisted root and a face embellished with glass eyes. This is a dog of dreams.

Root Carved Dog is only one of 250 works displayed on a single gigantic pedestal running down the center of the gallery or along three of the room’s walls. To see the others, visit the show before it closes this Sunday.

“Super-Rough” selected by Takashi Murakami in collaboration with participating Outsider Art Fair dealers and gallerists, is currently on view through June 27. Outsider Art Fair, 150 Wooster Street, New York, (212) 337-3338. For directions, hours, and tickets, visit outsiderartfair.com.

Images from the show follow below.

Jessica Silverman Gallery Now Represents Sadie Barnette
Sadie Barnette, whose practice spans photography, drawing, sculpture, and installation, has joined Jessica Silverman Gallery in San Fransisco. Barnette’s work explores race, sex, and love, and she participated in the Studio Museum in Harlem’s residency program in 2015. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Pérez Art Museum in Miami, the Blanton Museum in Austin, and other institutions. The artist is also represented by Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles.

Marcel Odenbach Awarded 2021 Wolfgang Hahn Prize
German video artist Marcel Odenbach has been named the winner of the 2021 Wolfgang Hahn Prize. The annual award is administered by the Society for Modern Art at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany, and honors an exceptional contemporary artist. The institution will acquire Odenbach’s Schnittvorlagen (or “master copies”), an ongoing archive of photographic collages. The works will be exhibited publicly for the first time at the award ceremony which will take place at the institution in November 2021. Previous winners of the award include Betye Saar (2020), Huang Yong Ping (2016), Kerry James Marshall (2014), and Andrea Fraser (2013). Yilmaz Dziewior, the Museum Ludwig’s director, said in a statement, “Marcel Odenbach creates works that—experimental in form and theoretically founded in content—expose historical connections between colonialism and globalization and make the violence of the normative and representation tangible.”

Grimm Gallery Opens Second New York Location
Grimm, which maintains two gallery spaces in Amsterdam and one in New York, will open a second New York location at 54 White Street in Tribeca. The 6,000 square-foot exhibition space is slated to open in December 2020.

Blank Forms Editions Names Managing Editor
Blank Forms, a New York-based nonprofit organization that supports emerging and underrepresented artists working in interdisciplinary art practices, has appointed Ciarán Finlayson as managing editor of Blank Forms Editions, a newly formed position to oversee the further development of Blank Forms’s publications program that has so far included anthologies and poetry collections as well as recordings. Finlayson is a writer and editor from Houston, Texas, whose work has appeared in publications including Kunst und Politik, PARSE, and Artforum, where he served as an assistant editor. Lawrence Kumpf, artistic director of Blank Forms, said in a statement, “A key aspect of Blank Forms’ publishing program is the creation of a richer discourse around the intersection of experimental music and art, and Finlayson brings crucial knowledge and experience to this endeavor.”

Metropolitan Museum Appoints Chair of Education and Chief Digital Officer
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has named Heidi Holder as its new chair of education and Douglas Hegley as its next chief digital officer, with both appointees taking up their posts in October. Holder previously served as director of education at the Queens Museum, and in her new position she will oversee all of the Met’s educational programs. Hegley joins the Met from the Minneapolis Institute of Art, where he served as the institution’s first chief digital officer.

Kwesi Botchway, Green Fluffy Coat, 2020, acrylic on canvas.

Thursday, September 17

Gallery 1957 To Open London Outpost
Gallery 1957, which is based in Accra, Ghana, will open a new outpost in London on the ground floor of a Kensington townhouse in Hyde Park Gate on October 23. The inaugural exhibition at the space, which is co-curated by writer Ekow Eshun, will feature new figurative works by painter Kwesi Botchway. Forthcoming presentations at the London gallery will spotlight Tiffany Alfonseca, Serge Attukwei Clottey, and Gideon Appah.

Public Art Fund Elects New Board Chair
Public Art Fund, an arts nonprofit in New York, has elected Elizabeth Fearon Pepperman as chair of its board of directors. Pepperman has been a board member since 2014, serving on the program committee and executive and external affairs committees. Pepperman has held leadership roles at arts nonprofits for over a decade, including tenures as president emerita and board chair of the Children’s Museum of the Arts in New York, and as a member of the Parrish Art Museum Family Council.

Victoria Miro Adds Doron Langberg to its Roster
Victoria Miro in London now represents Brooklyn-based painter Doron Langberg. Langberg is best known for his vibrant, large-scale figurative paintings, which often depict intimate scenes of the artist and his loved ones. He was the subject of a solo show at Yossi Milo gallery last year, and his first exhibition with Victoria Miro will take place in 2021.

PowSOLO Awards Name Inaugural Winners
The PowSOLO Awards, a collaboration between the Dutch arts collective Powland Network and the Madrid-based contemporary art project Colección SOLO, have named five international sound artists as their inaugural winners. Enrique del Castillo, who won the “best sound art” category of the awards for the work Phonoptics Readers, will receive €10,000 (about $11,800) and an opportunity to exhibit at Espacio SOLO in Madrid. Artists Nolan Lem, Ioana Bremer Moser, and Etienne Krähenbühl will each receive €1,000 (about $1,200), and Enrico Ascoli and Hilaro Asola received a special mention.

Wednesday, September 16

Rabkin Foundation Awards Grants to American Arts Journals
Amid widespread financial fallout from the pandemic, the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation is giving individual grants of $20,000 to nine nonprofit arts publications in the U.S. Recipients of the grants for general operational support are ARTS.BLACK (of Detroit), BOMB (Brooklyn), Bmore Art (Baltimore), the Brooklyn Rail, Burnaway (Atlanta), Glasstire (Houston), the Maine Arts Journal (Portland), the New Art Examiner (Chicago), and X-TRA (Los Angeles).

Tuesday, September 15

David Nolan Gallery Now Represents Dorothea Rockburne
David Nolan Gallery in New York has added artist Dorothea Rockburne to its roster. Rockburne is renowned for her abstract painted structures, whose influences span astronomy, geometry, and ancient Egyptian iconography. She has exhibited widely since the late 1960s, and in the last decade been the subject of prominent surveys, including ones at Dia:Beacon, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Parrish Art Museum. David Nolan will host its first solo exhibition of Rockburne’s work in fall 2021.

Portrait of Dorothea Rockburne, 1980.

The Africa Institute Commissions Adjaye Associates to Design New Sharjah Campus
The Africa Institute, which was established in 2018 and is dedicated to the study, research, and documentation of Africa and the African diaspora in the Arab world, announced that it has commissioned Adjaye Associates to design its new campus in downtown Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. The institute is helmed by Cornell University professor Salah M. Hassan, who serves as its founding director, and Sharjah Art Foundation president and director Hoor Al Qasimi, who serves as president. Architect David Adjaye’s design for the 343,175-square-foot campus, which will include open-air interior courtyards, a research library, auditorium and performance space, exhibition gallery, and site-specific installations by artists, will be unveiled on October 8.

Monday, September 14

Jova Lynne Rejoins MOCAD as Senior Curator
After leaving the institution earlier this year, Jova Lynne has returned to the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit as senior curator. Lynne first joined MOCAD in 2017, and was appointed senior curator in November 2019. She departed in spring 2020 amid protests against the leadership of executive director Elysia Borowy-Reeder, who was placed on administrative leave following accusations of “allegations of poor management and racial and gender bias (including harassment and bullying) from current and former employees.” (Borowy-Reeder was later terminated by the museum.) Lynne regained her responsibilities effective immediately and is currently planning an exhibition of Detroit artists slated to open February 2021.

Goodman Gallery Adds New Artists to Roster
Goodman Gallery, which maintains spaces in London, Capetown, and Johannesburg, now represents artists Paul Maheke and Naama Tsabar. Maheke, who is based in Paris, will have a solo exhibition with Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg in April 2021. The gallery will present a solo exhibition by Tsabar, who is based in New York, at its London space in October 2021.

Mohamed Bourouissa Wins Annual Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize
Artist Mohamed Bourouissa has won the 2020 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize, which comes with about $38,600. Bourouissa was nominated for his 2019 exhibition “Free Trade” at the Rencontres d’Arles, and his practice spans photography, film, drawing, and sculpture. Work by Bourouissa and the other artists shortlisted for the award—Anton Kusters, Mark Neville, and Clare Strand—will remain on view at the Photographers’ Gallery in London through September 20.

Outsider Art Fair Names New Director, Details Upcoming Edition in Paris
Nikki Iacovella, who most recently served as the managing director at Peter Freeman Inc. in New York, has been appointed director of the Outsider Art Fair, which holds exhibitions in New York and Paris. Iacovella has previously worked as a gallery and project manager for Art Basel and she has managed a Melbourne-based gallery specializing in Indigenous Australian art. The fair has also revealed that its eighth edition in Paris will be accessible online and in a curated exhibition organized by Alison M. Gingeras at the Hôtel Drouot.