Self-Made: A Century of Inventing Artists

Sixty self-taught artists from the early twentieth century to today depict themselves through self-portraits, alter egos, and autobiographies, challenging narratives of isolation and amateurism.

Why go

The exhibition reframes self-taught artists not as outsiders but as practitioners rooted in diverse learning sites—professional expertise, community traditions, artistic networks—drawing on the museum's reparative cataloguing project to center artists' own perspectives and aesthetic choices.

What to expect

Three galleries organized chronologically around self-portraits, alter egos, and autobiographies, featuring paintings, sculptures, photographs, videos, and artists' notebooks by sixty national and international figures, many rarely seen or recently acquired by the museum.

Things to know

• Sixty artists featured, drawn primarily from the American Folk Art Museum's collection.
• Exhibition organized around three methods of artistic self-making: self-portraits, alter egos, and autobiographies.
• Grows out of the museum's 2023 reparative cataloguing project, Rethinking Biography, reassessing how twentieth- and twenty-first-century wor
• Curated by Valérie Rousseau, Curatorial Chair and Senior Curator of 20th-Century & Contemporary Art, with Suzie Oppenheimer, Ponsold-Motherw
• Featured artists include Henry Darger, Bill Traylor, Morris Hirshfield, Horace Pippin, and Martín Ramírez.
• Associated programs include virtual insights, in-person workshops, and artist dialogues running through July 2026.

Plan your visit

Free admission. Open today 11:30 am–6:00 pm. Located at 2 Lincoln Square, New York City.

From the venue

Self-Made: A Century of Inventing Artists takes a critical look at the historical definition of the "self-taught artist" in the United States from the early twentieth century to today.