‘She had this divine calling’: the incredible and transporting art of Minnie Evans

Just over 50 years after she was one of the first Black artists to have a solo show at the Whitney, the museum gathers some of her most remarkable paintings for a new exhibition Surprisingly, the term “outsider art” was coined fairly recently – in 1972, when the art historian Roger Cardinal made it the title of the book with which he introduced the idea to the English-speaking world.

Since then, debates have raged as to whether it’s really justified to use such a term to describe art made beyond the confines of the art world, and if any of the other competing terms – among them naive art, folk art and raw art – are really any better.

The Whitney Museum of American Art’s new show, The Lost World: The Art of Minnie Evans, offers audiences an opportunity to contemplate just how its subject may – or may not – have been an outsider to the art world, and to also revel in Evans’s increasing insiderness in the decades since her death in 1987.

A comprehensive retrospective with nearly 100 pieces covering the entirety of Evans’s artistic output, the show occurs almost exactly 50 years after the Whitney first introduced the artist’s genius to New York’s art elite.

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