folkartwork

As told by me @folkartwork

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the largest museum of art in North and South America. You may know it as The Met Museum, or simply, The Met. Either way, it welcomes more than three million people a year and one of the top visited museums in the world. It is home to some must-see incredible art.

While some of it is looted, and some of it donated, most of it is not on display. There’s like 80,000 total pieces in the permanent collection. Unfortunately, at the time of this writing, a lot of these tremendous works of art from self-taught, outsider, and folk art artists fall under the “not on display” tag.

Largely thanks to a single donation of art in 2014, the Met has dozens of works by self-taught artists. Artists like favorites Bill Traylor, Grandma Moses, Nellie Mae Rowe and more. Below you will find thirteen total artists and their exquisite examples of visual art. These works in particular jumped off the page when scouring the permanent collection of the Met.

All information about the museum’s collection, including what is and what is not on display comes from publicly available resources. It is as up to date as possible at the time of this publishing. If a work is currently or no longer on display, I apologize for any confusion. And if anyone from the Met is reading this, if you want me to come curate your collection and find a wall for all of this work to be displayed, I’m there.

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HORACE PIPPIN

This tiny, measuring 6.5 inches by 8.5 inches, self-portrait is absolutely stunning. Part of a group of eight works by Horace Pippin donated by Jane Kendall Gingrich, one of the socially prominent women in Philadelphia who Pippin had cultivated patronage relationships.

“A monumental statement of self-confidence. Any artist would be happy to reach the level of maturity embodied in this small picture.” 

KERRY JAMES MARSHALl in a foreword for a 2015 Pippin retrospective via the met museum

By the time of his death in 1946, Horace Pippin, who had no formal art training and was entirely self-taught, had solo shows in Philadelphia, San Francisco, Chicago and in New York in 1938, in the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition ‘Masters of Popular Painting: Modern Primitives of Europe and America’.

Born in 1888 in West Chester, Pennsylvania, Horace Pippin served in World War I in K Company, the 3rd Battalion of the 369th infantry regiment. This battalion was known for their bravery in battle as the famous Harlem Hellfighters. After the war, Pippin returned to West Chester and began painting as a way to rehabilitate the paralysis he had suffered during the war in which he was shot in the arm by a German Sniper.

Drawing on themes such as the war, racial segregation, and biblical tales, Pippin had over 130 works donated to museums and prominent collectors of the time. Horace Pippin didn’t start painting until he was thirty-seven years old. Young for many on this list, he would become one of the most recognized African-American artists in the country.

The Met Museum has nine works by Horace Pippin in its permanent collection, all but one donated by Gingrich in 1982. Only two works are currently on display as of the time of this writing.

NELLIE MAE ROWE

Every work by Nellie Mae Rowe brings a smile to my face. The colors, the imagery, the playfulness, and the storytelling. This makes her work widely regarded and a showstopper for any museum or collection.

The artist executed this drawing (Nellie’s Birthday; seen above) to commemorate her eighty-first birthday, which, owing to her cancer diagnosis earlier that year, she thought would be her last. 

The Met Museum

Born in the year 1900, Nellie is best known today for her colorful works on paper which you will find here in the Met’s collection. Although if you were at last year’s Outsider Art Fair, a student in my art history class or someone driving down the street in Georgia, you would know that Rowe worked across many mediums. Collages altered photographs, hand-sewn dolls, home installations, and sculptural environments. This is what first garnered her attention and thrusted her onto the national spotlight.

ACQUISTION

The Met Museum acquired these works alongside Thornton Dial’s work (among others on this list) in 2015 through a donation by Souls Grown Deep Foundation. Souls Grown Deep is a fantastic non-profit organization that advocates the inclusion of Black artists from the South. They have helped dozens of American museums acquire works by Black artists while “fostering economic empowerment, racial and social justice, and educational advancement in the communities that gave rise to these artists.”

Nellie Mae Rowe’s works can be found in many museums across the country. The American Folk Art Museum, the International Museum of Folk Art, and the biggest collection can be found in her home state of Georgia at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.

The Met Museum has five works by Nellie Mae Rowe in its permanent collection. None are currently on display as of the time of this writing.

BILL TRAYLOR

A major museum’s collection is not a collection unless it includes the work of the great Bill Traylor. One of the most important artists of the 20th century whom a majority of people haven’t heard of in the United States, Traylor’s work continues to inspire, surprise, and blow you away with his ingenuity to this day.

Born into slavery, living on the streets, and making art on found pieces of cardboard, it wasn’t until the early 1940s, well into his 80s, that Charles Shannon recognized Bill Traylor’s work and began to champion him. Since this is a post about the Met and not MoMa, I won’t go into the whole Director of MoMa turning down his work in 1942 story here, but for some reason, the Met didn’t acquire any Bill Traylor work until 1995.

A MAN WHO SAW IT ALL

Bill Traylor was a recorder of life in the American South at a unique period in time. For even more context, Traylor, a black man who was born in 1854 saw a lot. The emancipation of slaves, Jim Crow laws and Reconstruction, World Wars, the Great Migration, and a segregated Alabama that left him living on the streets of Montgomery into his 80s. Animals, men, women, fights, construction, drinking — Traylor painted a lot. Remember, he had seen a lot. So much that his works total nearly 1,500 pencil drawings and gouache paintings that leave behind a vibrant, complicated, and changing time seen through the eyes of Bill Traylor.

You may know a Bill Traylor work when you see it. His limited color palette, lack of space and depth, and vivid sense of design and storytelling, but just when you think you’ve seen all the Bill Traylor works another once comes along, and takes your breath away.

The Met Museum currently has thirteen works by Bill Traylor in its collection, five of which have recently been loaned (but promised) to the Met and eight that are actually in its permanent collection. None are currently on display as of the time of this writing.

MORRIS HIRSHFIELD

Morris Hirshfield, considered one of the most critically acclaimed self-taught masters of the 20th century, wasn’t always celebrated. After many exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, including his own one-man show in 1943 after only six years of painting, Hirshfield received many negative reviews and harsh criticism, earning the brilliant painter the nickname “The Master of Two Left Feet” as his figures were not always anatomically or proportionally correct. This work shows the terrific process Hirshfield, self-taught, deployed as pencil tracings of the stage beauties can be seen through the paint layer.

Born in Poland and originally a women’s shoemaker, he retired in 1935 due to failing health and took up painting two years later. Today Hirshfield’s brilliance is widely celebrated, particularly in folk art circles. Earlier this year the American Folk Art Museum capped off a brilliant exhibition of his work titled, “Morris Hirshfield Rediscovered” which included 40 works by Morris Hirshfield, this one ‘Stage Beauties’ included as well as a wonderful painting of three cats owned by contemporary artists KAWS.

The Met Museum has only one work by Morris Hirshfield in its permanent collection, donated to the museum in 2013 by Carroll Janis, son of Sidney Janis who discovered Hirshfield’s work decades ago. It is not currently on display as of the time of this writing.

GEE’S BEND QUILTS

There is no quilt like a Gee’s Bend quilt. Considered some of “the most miraculous works of modern art America has ever produced.”, these quilts stand alone in their style, color, and unique patchwork coming from a small but tight-knit community of African-American women in the South.

The residents of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, are direct descendants of the enslaved people who worked the cotton plantation established in 1816 by Joseph Gee. After the Civil War, their ancestors remained on the plantation working as sharecroppers. In the 1930s, the price of cotton fell, and the community faced ruin. As part of its Depression-era intervention, the Federal Government purchased ten thousand acres of the former plantation and provided loans enabling residents to acquire and farm the land formerly worked by their ancestors. Unlike the residents of other tenant com­munities, who could be forced by economic circumstances to move—or who were sometimes evicted in retaliation for their efforts to achieve civil rights—the people of the Bend could retain their land and homes. Cultural tradi­tions like quiltmaking were nourished by these continuities.

Souls Grown Deep Foundation

The quilts seen here span from the 1930s to the 1970s, and come from familiar names in the Gee’s Bend Quilting community, such as Sue Willie Seltzer, (from left to right in the above gallery of four quilts) Lucy T. Pettway, Annie Bendolph, Loretta Pettway, and Willie “Ma Willie” Abrams. While some quilts come from generations of handed-downThese works patterns such as the “Housetop,” “Blocks and Stripes,” and “Brick Layer,” some would make more pictorial works as artists like Lucy T. Pettway would walk around taking notes and making sketches of everyday life, often incorporating these into her works.

These showstoppers were donated in 2015 to the Met alongside many more works by prominent self-taught and folk artists from the South. The great organization Souls Grown Deep Foundation has a magnificent database of many more quilts and has helped place Gee’s Bend quilts in the permanent collections of over 30 leading art museums across the country, as they are a crucial chapter in the history of American art.

The Met Museum has twenty-one Gees Bend Quilts in its permanent collection. None are currently on display as of the time of this writing.

MOSE TOLLIVER

How could you not love Mose Tolliver‘s work? Playful, colorful, sometimes downright inappropriate but sure do light up any wall lucky enough to have one.

Due to a lack of interest, Tolliver dropped out of school after the third grade. Born in the 1920s and working a series of odd jobs most of his life in and around Montgomery, Alabama, he started painting in the 1960s after an unfortunate accident. A half-ton of marble fell off a forklift and crushed his legs, to fight boredom and alleviate the pain from his injury. Tolliver claims he was painting before the injury and refused to take lessons after, luckily, because he wanted to create and work in his own style.

Both works seen here are from 1987, but only one features his signature backward “S” in his signature on each work. The backward “S” signifies that it is created by Mose Tolliver, as some of his family members, including his daughter Annie, make art in a very similar style.

The Met Museum has two works by Mose Tolliver in its permanent collection. None are currently on display as of the time of this writing.

MARY T. SMITH

Mary. T Smith is another artist heavily promoted by collector William Arnett. This collector championed Southern self-taught artists like Nellie Mae Rowe, Thornton Dial, and many others. Born in Mississippi in 1905, Smith would use house paint on wood or tin to create colorful and expressive works of figures. Some biblical, sometimes with abstracted text and with lots of dots and dashes.

Taking up painting in her 70s, after turning her home and property into a “highly public form of spiritual autobiography,” or as some might put a beautifully decorated art environment. Collectors eventually took notice and Smith eventually couldn’t keep up with the demand. Her work, once likened to that of Jean Michel-Basquiat, can be seen in many private collections and galleries. In 2022, Smith’s work took part in the National Gallery of Art’s “Called To Create: Black Artists of the American South” exhibit.

The Met Museum has two works by Mary T. Smith in its permanent collection. None are currently on display as of the time of this writing.

LONNIE HOLLEY

I once saw Lonnie Holley wearing a University of Iowa sweatshirt while performing music in Iowa City, and that is enough for me to become a fan forever. On top of being a gifted musician, Lonnie Holley is a renowned visual artist. He has been making assemblages and immersive environments made of found materials for decades.

In 1981, after he brought a few of his sandstone carvings to the Birmingham Museum of Art, the then director began helping Holley, also known as the ‘Sand Man’, to promote his work in and around the area. This would lead to dozens and dozens of exhibitions of Holley’s work at major museums around the country.

The only living artist on this list (outside of some current Gee’s Bend Quiltmakers), Lonnie Holley just released his fourth album titled “Oh Me Oh My” which received high praise from music critics. In 2024, the seventy-three year old will be going on an East Coast and European tour of his music.

The Met Museum has three works by Lonnie Holley in its permanent collection. None are currently on display as of the time of this writing.

PURVIS YOUNG

Purvis Young was born in 1943 and lived his entire life the predominantly African American neighborhood of Miami called Overtown. At a young age, Young’s uncle introduced him to drawing, but he quickly lost interest. Never attending high school, it wasn’t until spending time in jail for a few short years in which Young regained his interested in art. Upon his release, he started produced thousands of small drawings which he stored in shopping carts. He later glued them into discarded books and magazines found on the often vacant streets of Overtown.

Today, his works are in the collections of Jane Fonda, Damon Wayans, and Dan Akroyd. The permanent collections of the High Museum of Art, the American Folk Art Museum, and many more have works by Young. Like many pieces on this list, this one entered the Met Museum’s collection from a donation in 2014 overseen by the Souls Grown Deep Foundation.

This smaller piece, “Locked Up Their Minds” comes from a large series of much larger murals. Young created these in his Overtown neighborhood, inspired by the mural movement across the country in the 1960s.

The Met Museum has two works by Purvis Young in its permanent collection. None are currently on display as of the time of this writing.

RONALD LOCKETT

Since his childhood in Bessemer, Alabama, Ronald Lockett knew he wanted to be an artist. It probably didn’t hurt that his cousin and mentor was Thornton Dial, a pioneer of self-taught art in the South.

Lockett was the youngest artist working in the Birmingham-Bessemer group, which included his cousin Dial, the aforementioned Lonnie Holley, and wonderful artist Joe Minter. Lockett’s artwork is heavily influenced and reflects current events. This piece “The Enemy Among Us” is is one of six works created in memorial of the Oklahoma City bombing.

The majority of Lockett’s work has been described to be influenced by “blackness in relation to HIV/AIDS, LGBT life, nationalism, and the racial implications of terms such as ‘outsider,’ ‘self-taught,’ and ‘folk’ in American art”.

The Met Museum has only one work by Ronald Lockett in its permanent collection. It is not currently on display as of the time of this writing.

GRANDMA MOSES

Grandma Moses, the queen of holiday paintings, was born Anna Mary Robertson in 1860 in Greenwich, New York. As if being friends with Norman Rockwell and appearing on the cover of Time magazine wasn’t enough. This self-taught artist and painter of the American rural countryside may go down as America’s greatest folk artist. And it started when she was 78.

She always enjoyed art her whole life. In her teens while working as a live-in housekeeper, an employer provided her with some drawing materials. She continued to make and create for the rest of her life. Even with ten children and working as a housekeeper most of her life, Anna as she was known at the time spent most of her free-time knitting and embroidering pictures. At the age of 78 after she developed arthritis, it was too much to handle and she began painting more.

Her artwork appears in countless museums across the country. In 2006, her 1943 painting titled “Sugaring Off” was sold at Christie’s for $1.2 million. Quite the price tag for a self-taught artist and setting an auction record for Grandma Moses.

The Met Museum has seven works by Grandma Moses in its permanent collection. Only one is currently on display as of the time of this writing.

JOHN KANE

Born in Scotland in 1860, John Kane inadvertently paved the way for many self-taught artists like Grandma Moses and Morris Hirshfield. It wasn’t easy, but he is now widely known for and celebrated as a painter for his “naïve art”.

Since he could not afford the expense of art school, Kane was entirely self-taught. His style has been variously classified as “naïve,” “primitive,” and “folk art”. A genre that gained critical acceptance in the 1920s and 1930s.

Kane was recognized by a museum in 1927, the first self-taught American painter in the 20th century. His work was admitted to the Carnegie International Exhibition, gaining considerable attention. So much attention from the media, people initially suspected that his success was a prank.

The Met Museum has three works by John Kane in its permanent collection. One, this one, is currently on display as of the time of this writing.

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Research for this article comes from exploring the publicly available online collection of the Met Museum, Wikipedia, and years of exploring and curating outsider art for the @folkartwork Instagram feed.