Outside In: Self-Taught Artists and Chicago

July 11 – September 15, 2002

Organized from the Smart Museum's permanent collection and selected loans, this exhibition included works in a variety of media by Chicago self-taught artists Henry Darger, Bonnie Harris, Aldobrando Piacenza, Pauline Simon, and Joseph Yoakum, as well as Jesse Howard, Martin Ramirez and others who did not live in Chicago but were influential and collected here. 

Outside In examined such issues as the ever shifting, and sometimes controversial, definitions of what outsider art is as well as its impact on the broader cultural life of the city.