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American Visionary Art Museum on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
American Visionary Art Museum on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
avam exterior on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
IMG_1071 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
Entrance to the Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore.
Visionary entrance on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
IMG_1065 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
The museum is housed in three buildings, along with some outdoor space and is partially covered in this mirrored mosaic. The works inside are all by artists with no formal training, but some were simply spectacular.
What is The American Visionary Art Museum?
The American Visionary Art Museum (AVAM) is an art museum located in the Federal Hill neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland. 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 self-taught art.
Photo of Rebecca Hoffberger by Craig Terkowitz
Who is the Visionary behind it all?
The founder and director of AVAM is Rebecca Hoffberger, a former psychiatric nurse who left her job to “trumpet the wonders of raw human creativity” [1]. She raised $7 million in six years from donors such as Anita Roddick before opening the museum to the public on November 24, 1995.
Although her ability to raise large quantities of cash is impressive, her rejection of academic scholarship and her refusal to follow tradition have upset prominent members of the art world. For examples, Chicago art dealer Carl Hammer said, “To open a museum of this magnitude, and the fact that no one had ever heard of her before… She totally ignored the rest of scholarship and just did it completely on her own. It gave people immediate bad vibes… The museum did things its own way, without coming to anyone else” (Fine 2004, p. 253).
Despite her philosophies, and often in fact because of them, the museum has won the support of collectors and the public through its exhibitions that examine the relationship of art to the human condition rather than to the canon of art history. 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. Hoffberger takes pride in the fact that AVAM is “pretty un-museumy” [2].
AVAM has 55,000 square feet of exhibit space but has a permanent collection of only 5,000 pieces. Some of this work is displayed in a gallery on the first floor of the Main Building, throughout the James Rouse Visionary Center, and outdoors when new temporary “themed” exhibitions are being installed.
American Visionary Art Museum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mosaic Art Source American Visionary Art Museum Mosaic Archive
DSC01006 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
DSC01005 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
Icarus mosaic @ American Visionary Art Museum, the coolest art museum ever!
Mosaic Art Source American Visionary Art Museum Mosaic Archive
Chardonnay Tree, originally uploaded by Linus Gelber.
Mirrors AVAM on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
The Bling Tree, originally uploaded by Linus Gelber.
The American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore is an exquisite, insane place. It’s a loopy small-scale Guggenheim of a building, encrusted all along the front facade with chips of splintered glass and shards of mirror. The effect is welcoming, enthusiastic, and a bit dotty.
The patient tree out front is also covered with plates and bits of glass and mirror. The trunk is tiled from ground level up; the branches are festooned with shiny colorful strands, garnished with the occasional hoops and rosettes, all blazing under the relentless sun.
Icterus Baltimore Aquus Marinus on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
I spotted this most rare blue-colored Baltimore Oriole, the Icterus Baltimore Aquus Marinus, perched in the employeee parking lot of the AVAM.
Mosaic Art Source American Visionary Art Museum Mosaic Archive
mosaic stair on Flickr - Photo Sharing! sydney
Steps located on the coastal walk between Bondi Beach and Coogee, Sydney, Australia
Mosaic Art Source - Mosaic Stairs & Step Images Archive
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