American Visionary Art Museum

39°16′49″N 76°36′25″W / 39.28028°N 76.60694°W / 39.28028; -76.60694

American Visionary Art Museum
Map
EstablishedNovember 24, 1995; 28 years ago (1995-11-24)
LocationBaltimore, Maryland, US
TypeArt museum
VisitorsOver 100,000 annually
DirectorRebecca Alban Hoffberger
Websitehttp://avam.org/

The American Visionary Art Museum (AVAM) is an art museum located in Baltimore, Maryland's Federal Hill neighborhood at 800 Key Highway. The museum specializes in the preservation and display of outsider art (also known as "intuitive art," "raw art," or "art brut"). The city agreed to give the museum a piece of land on the south shore of the Inner Harbor under the condition that its organizers would clean up residual pollution from a copper paint factory and a whiskey warehouse that formerly occupied the site. It has been designated by Congress as America's national museum for visionary art.[1]

AVAM's 1.1 acre campus contains 67,000 square feet of exhibition space and a permanent collection of approximately 4,000 pieces.[2] The permanent collection includes works by visionary artists like Ho Baron, Nek Chand, Howard Finster, Vanessa German, Mr. Imagination (aka Gregory Warmack), Leonard Knight, William Kurelek, Leo Sewell, Judith Scott, Ben Wilson, as well as over 40 pieces from the Cabaret Mechanical Theatre of London. AVAM artists, the museum boasts, include “farmers, housewives, mechanics, the disabled, the homeless. . . all inspired by the fire within.”[3] The museum's Main Building features three floors of exhibition space, and the campus includes a Tall Sculpture Barn and Wildflower Garden, along with large exhibition and event spaces in the Jim Rouse Visionary Center.

The museum has no staff curators, preferring to use guest curators for its shows. Rather than focusing shows on specific artists or styles, it sponsors themed exhibitions with titles such as Wind in Your Hair and High on Life. The museum's founder, Rebecca Alban Hoffberger, takes pride in the fact that AVAM is "pretty un-museumy".[4]

  1. ^ Cardin, Benjamin L. (May 28, 1992). "Cosponsors - H.Con.Res.327 - 102nd Congress (1991-1992): Expressing the sense of the Congress regarding visionary art as a national treasure and regarding the American Visionary Art Museum as a national repository and educational center for visionary art". www.congress.gov. Retrieved April 2, 2020.
  2. ^ "AVAM: Museum History". Archived from the original on October 31, 2012. Retrieved September 24, 2012.
  3. ^ "Art with a Heart". The Attic. Archived from the original on April 11, 2019. Retrieved April 11, 2019.
  4. ^ "Visionary Arts Museum Shows "Wind in My Hair"". Baltimorechronicle.com. Retrieved July 15, 2012.