The Intuit Art Museum (IAM) in Chicago, one of the leading institutions in the United States devoted to self-taught artists, has received two important gifts of art that will expand its collection by 61 works.
The IAM (formerly known as Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art) was founded in Chicago in 1991 by a friendly group of aficionados and collectors with a simple goal of finding ways to exhibit work by self-taught artists. One of those early supporters was Jan Petry (1939-2024), a Chicago advertising executive who filled her home with outsider art. Petry bequeathed 47 works, some by anonymous artists—including an Odd Fellows carved wood staff dating from 1880—and others by Emery Blagdon, James Castle, Ulysses Davis, Charles Dellschau, William Hawkins, Martín Ramírez, Günther Schützenhöfer and Leopold Strobl.
Charles Dellschau, Fall Not, 1920 Collection of Intuit Art Museum, gift of Jan Petry and Angie Mills
A second gift of 14 works comes from the Los Angeles-based scholar Gordon W. Bailey’s collection of African American art. That trove includes works by Sam Doyle, Sybil Gibson, Roy Ferdinand and Mose Tolliver. Bailey, who has been gifting museums with works from his collection over the years, has long been associated with IAM despite living on the West Coast. His gift was in honour of IAM’s growth and the $10m expansion it completed last spring.
“Their gifts, which bring new artists’ stories into our galleries, strengthen our ability to serve and inspire the many communities who rely on our museum as a place of connection, creativity and discovery,” says Debra Kerr, the museum’s president and chief executive.She notes that the works donated by Petry will be shown in the gallery named after her in the upcoming exhibition Life is an Art: The Collection of Jan Petry (9 April 2026-21 March 2027).
Bailey’s gift is also an opportunity for IAM to fulfil one of its desires to bring more women of colour into the collection. He allowed the museum to select specific pieces to strengthen its holdings in that area.
“Chicago is recognised as the first place in the United States to embrace self-taught or outsider art,” Kerr says. A group of early supporters and advocates in the field formed a network that included Bailey—in 2001, he co-curated an exhibition at Intuit with Petry.
Ulysses Davis, Untitled (Fantasy beast), undated Collection of Intuit Art Museum, gift of Jan Petry in honor of Cleo Wilson
“Intuit did not set out to house a collection,” Kerr adds. In 1999, the museum purchased the first floor of its current space and in 2004 the board voted to begin collecting. The expansion completed last year tripled its space. The museum has never had an acquisitions budget per se, but has been able to make purchases over the years with restricted gifts of money for bringing certain works into the collection.
Another intentional shift in the museum’s evolution has been embracing the descriptor “self-taught” to refer to work created outside the mainstream art world and moving away from the jumble of terms and categories that have cluttered the field (like outsider, naïve and folk).
“Younger audiences and many artists, especially those of colour, have really pushed back on the outsider art term as being ‘othering’,” Kerr says. “Intuit is being sensitive to that shift in language.”
