It is hardly surprising that the phrase “outsider art” was invented not by the artists it describes, but by an “insider” academic, Roger Cardinal, in 1972. As a result, the idea was narrowed to late 19th- and early 20th-century “Sunday painters” such as Henri Rousseau, William Doriani, and Morris Hirshfield, rather than the many centuries of artists who came before them.
Museums have also helped shape, and restrict, the way “outsider art” has traditionally been defined. Collectors and curators including Jean and Howard Lipman played a key role in bringing European-American self-taught artists into the collections of North American institutions such as the Whitney and High Museums in the mid-20th century.
Yet that attention often came at a cost. In elevating those artists, they frequently ignored numerous other traditions, including those much closer to home, such as Haudenosaunee art and Hopi Kachina carving.
