From the Boston Globe:

The Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland, CA, has spent decades pushing the work of artists with disabilities into the mainstream. While their artists might previously have been sequestered in shows featuring “outsider” or “folk” artists, the work is now being displayed in venues like New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

One of Creative Growth’s biggest success stories was the late sculptor Judith Scott.

Scott - who had Down syndrome and was deaf and mute - had been institutionalized until she came to the center at age 40. With no sign language or any other communication skills, her only interface with the world was through sculptures made of twined fibers, string, and other materials.

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art recently put Scott’s work on display alongside other contemporary artists with no biographical information to call attention to her disability. Janet Bishop, SFMoMA’s curator for painting and sculpture, said the museum made “a conscious choice to show the piece with other examples of contemporary art.”

Here is an extended profile of Judith Scott from Raw Vision, a journal of outsider art. It tells the story of her rescue from the institution by her twin sister Joyce.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 at 11:50 am and is filed under arts/music, public attitudes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  Email This Post