October 16, 2022 — February 5, 2023

Gatecrashers: The Rise of the Self-Taught Artist in America

Featuring 60 works from leading collections across the country, Gatecrashers illuminates how artists, including John Kane, Horace Pippin, and Anna Mary Robertson Moses (Grandma Moses), overcame obstacles and “crashed the gates” of major museums in the United States, diversifying the art world across lines of race, ethnicity, class, ability, and gender. This is the first exhibition to focus on how self-taught artists gained their cultural power in this country thanks to evolving ideas about American identity, inclusion, and national character in art.

The Westmoreland is the closing venue for this traveling exhibition, after presentations at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta (20 August 2021 to 11 December 2021), and the Brandywine River Museum of Art (28 May to 5 September 2022). The Westmoreland presentation overlaps with Pittsburgh’s John Kane: The Life & Art of an American Workman (on view through 8 January 2023) at the Senator John Heinz History Center, as well as American Perspectives: Stories from the American Folk Art Museum Collection at The Frick Pittsburgh (15 October 2022 to 8 January 2023).

For a list of upcoming events and programs related to this exhibition, please click here.

Gatecrashers: The Rise of the Self-Taught Artist in America is curated by Katherine Jentleson and organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.

Gatecrashers Curator Katherine Jentleson will be joining us In Conversation at The Westmoreland on November 30th. Click Here for event details.

Grandma Moses (Anna Mary Robertson Moses) (American, 1860–1961), Black Horses, 1942, oil on Masonite, courtesy of Galerie St. Etienne, New York. © Grandma Moses Properties Co., New York.

Grandma Moses (Anna Mary Robertson Moses) (American, 1860–1961), Sugaring Off, 1943, oil on canvas, courtesy of Galerie St. Etienne, New York. © Grandma Moses Properties Co., New York.

Grandma Moses (Anna Mary Robertson Moses) (American, 1860–1961), Rockabye, 1957, oil on Masonite, courtesy of Galerie St. Etienne, New York. © Grandma Moses Properties Co., New York.

Horace Pippin (American, 1888–1946), Saying Prayers, 1943, oil on canvas, Brandywine River Art Museum, The Betsy James Wyeth Fund, 1980.

John Kane (American, born Scotland, 1860–1934), Scene From The Scottish Highlands, ca. 1927, oil on canvas, Carnegie Museum of Art, gift of G. David Thompson.

John Kane (American, born Scotland, 1860–1934), Larimer Avenue Bridge, 1932, oil on canvas, Carnegie Museum of Art, gift of G. David Thompson.

Josephine Joy (American, 1869–1948), Waterbirds Nesting, ca. 1935–1939, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum,

Victor Gatto (American, 1893–1965), Tigers in the Jungle, undated, oil on canvas, Collection of Carl and Marian Mullis.

This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts and The Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation.

Gatecrashers: The Rise of the Self-Taught Artist in America is also generously supported by The Heinz Endowments and the Hillman Exhibition Fund of The Westmoreland Museum of American Art. Additional support provided by The Richard C. von Hess Foundation.

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