Africa in the Arts of Philadelphia: Bullock, Searles, and Twins Seven-Seven

Woodmere Art Museum - Philadelphia, PA

02/08/2020 - 05/17/2020

Susanna W. Gold, Ph.D., Guest Curator

This year's NY Outsider Art Fair received extensive and lavish Press coverage.  We were pleased to get top billing in several stories:

Outsider Art Rings in New York’s Fair Season

Top dealers congregate at Metropolitan Pavilion as New York’s season first fair opens to the public this weekend

By Clanci Jo Conover  Fine Art Globe

January 17, 2020

Join the Stampede!

Please visit us in New York at the 2020 Outsider Art Fair

Indigo Arts presents a collection of work by visionary and self-taught artists from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. The collection includes work by artists from Brazil, Burkina Faso, Congo, Cuba, Ghana, Haiti, India, Kenya, Mozambique and Nigeria.

I was sad to learn the news that Gerard Fortuné, the playful, prolific and much loved Haitian naif artist passed away on December 8th, 2019.  I have heard several dates cited for Gerard's birth, - 1933, 1925, and according to the obituary below from Le Centre d'Art, 1924.  And he had told me that he did not know when he was born.  By the earliest date he would have been 95 when he passed away on December 8th.  He seemed almost ageless, and I had begun to believe that each time I visited Haiti Gerard would still be there.  Sadly not so.

A recent article in the New York Times profiles a variety of the artists exhibiting this last July at the International Folk Art Market in Santa Fe.  The story looked at folk artists from Borneo, Cuba, India, Mexico and Peru.  The first artist introduced was our friend Leandro Gomez Quintero from Baracoa, Cuba: