MoMA Gets Last Works from Darger Estate

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New York's Museum of Modern Art has acquired 13 double-sided drawings by Henry Darger, arguably the most well-known Outsider artist. Darger, a janitor who spent most of his life in the same Chicago apartment building, died in 1973, leaving behind a trove of watercolors, drawings and collages discovered by his landlords, Nathan and Kiyoko Lerner. (The Lerners became the custodians of Darger's estate after the artist's death.)

The gift is in honor of MoMA curator Klaus Biesenbach, who organized a survey of the artist's work, "Disasters of War," in 2000 at New York's PS1 Contemporary Art Center. The show presented Darger alongside Goya and Jake and Dinos Chapman.

Biesenbach was the first curator from a major museum who had the vision to recognize Darger's importance," Andrew Edlin, the New York dealer who formerly represented Darger's estate, pointed out to A.i.A. "Prior to the PS1 show, Darger had been contextualized only as an Outsider artist. Now, a lot of the greatest self-taught artists have come to be recognized as part of the contemporary art dialogue."

The 13 new additions to MoMA's holdings are, according to Edlin, the last works left in Darger's estate. "Mrs. Lerner was strategic, and had a very emotional connection to the work. She held on to the ones that she thought were the best until the very end."

Henry Darger. Untitled (Spangled Blengins. Watercolor and pencil on paper. Gift of the estate in honor of Klaus Biesenbach. © 2011 Kiyoko Lerner / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

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brookeanderson 06/08/12 9:33pm

This is exciting news for the artist's posthumous career, the field of self-taught artists and their work, and MoMA. In this story, gallerist Andrew Edlin, who has represented the Darger estate since 2006, asserted that Klaus Biesenbach, PS1's Director of Chief Curator, was "the first curator from a major museum who had the vision to recognize Darger's importance."

There is a more accurate history surrounding the inclusion of Darger's work by major curators and museums, which, in fact, occurred long before the interests of Mr. Biesenbach and Mr. Edlin. Examples of prior recognition include: Parallel Visions: Modern Artists and Outsider Art, curated by Carol Eliel and Maurice Tuchman at LACMA in 1992; Art in Chicago 1945 – 1995, curated by Lynne Warren at the MCA, Chicago in 1996; and Self Taught Artists of the Twentieth-Century: An American Anthology, curated by Harald Szeemann and Elsa Longhauser, which debuted at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1998 and traveled nationall