POV - Blog . An Interview with Brooke Davis Anderson about Outsider Artist Henry Darger | PBS

An Interview with Brooke Davis Anderson about Outsider Artist Henry Darger

In 2005, POV aired Jessica Yu's film In the Realms of the Unreal. The film is the astounding tale of outsider artist Henry Darger, who, unbeknownst to anyone, had created a 15,000-page novel and hundreds of illustrations that have inspired artists and viewers since their discovery. Three years later, Darger continues to fascinate and astound, and last month, Dargerism: Contemporary Artists and Henry Darger opened at the American Folk Art Museum in New York City.

Dargerism is curated by Brooke Davis Anderson, the director and curator of the Contemporary Center at the American Folk Art Museum. Three years ago, we worked with Brooke on one of our favorite website features — an interactive audio tour through several of Darger's works for the POV In the Realms of the Unreal website. Now Brooke has been kind enough to answer some of our questions about the show at the Folk Art Museum, and Darger's continued hold on our imaginations.

Henry Darger: 6 Episode 3 Place not mentioned. Escape during violent storm, still fighting though persed for long distance. Zoom into the image. © Kiyoko Lerner. Image used by permission of the American Folk Art Museum.

POV: Tell us about the show you just curated at the American Folk Art Museum — Dargerism, Contemporary Artists and Henry Darger.

Brooke Davis Anderson: The Dargerism show illustrates how Henry Darger has been influential to eleven contemporary artists over the last 25 years. The show examines how one artist has played a role in contemporary discourse in the art world, but one of the underlying themes of the show is also the self-taught artist's movement from the periphery of the discourse to the center. In a way, I'm trying to be playful with this show: I'm suggesting that if so many artists are influenced by Darger, then he can no longer be considered to be on the margins of art history.

The eleven contemporary artists in the show are very diverse — they work in painting, sculpture, video, drawing, photography, etc., and Darger's influence on them are integrated into each artist's oeuvre. In fact, this is the first time the Folk Art Museum has highlighted academically trained artists, and it's also the first time we have exhibited video and contemporary photography.