The American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland (my hometown!) is dedicated to collecting and displaying so-called "outsider art." It has a pretty fabulous permanent collection of folk art, the art of the insane/mentally challenged, and weird stuff by normal outsiders, and also hosts year-long themed exhibitions annually. This is a cumbersome way to run a museum, in my humble opinion, but it must be working for them... Anyway! This past year's exhibit had the epic title "The Art of Storytelling: Lies, Enchantment, Humor and Truth," and aimed to take on the rather sweeping subject of narrative in visual art. Phew. I went to see it mainly because it included work by a well-known cut-paper artist, Beatrice Coron, and I had the opportunity to attend a one-day workshop with her (something I had been wanting to do for ages) at the museum during the last weeks of the show. 

Here's what AVAM's website has to say about "Storytelling": "From scripture to fairy tale, cartoons to cyberbullying, the raw power of stories to inspire and enchant, spread lies or to inform, simply has no equal. THE ART OF STORYTELLING: Lies, Enchantment, Humor & Truth is the American Visionary Art Museum's brand-new, supremely original exhibition featuring embroidery, diorama, sculpture, film, graffiti, and PostSecret confession—promoting all manner of acute 'visual listening' and delight for the whole family." Hyperbolic!

The work in the show was pretty eclectic, to say the least, and while some of it, including Beatrice's beautiful paper-cuts, did clearly include or advance a narrative, some of the pieces veered from the theme, which I found kind of amazing: The theme was too big to miss, I would have thought! Arguably the best and most moving work in the show was a set of embroideries made by Esther Krinitz, a Holocaust survivor from Poland who later emigrated to the US, as a way of sharing her story with her granddaughter. In general, it was having meaningful context of this kind that distinguished the good from the bad in this show, and the museum would have done well to leave some of the more vague content out. Also I seem to remember that the museum's collection includes some pieces (i.e. parts of Henry Darger's "Vivian Girls" epic) which clearly have everything to do with narrative, but which didn't make an appearance. I had the impression this was due to limited space, which, if true, is a shame.

I'm always drawn to "outsider" art for many reasons: The crafty media used appeal to me, and so does its obsessive quality. But I'm not at all sure I'm comfortable with the category. As great as it is, I wish AVAM could firm up its mission (and diversify its exhibits) a bit.