NEW YORK CITY, NY.- Outsider Art Fair, the only fair devoted to self-taught art, art brut, and outsider art, shared highlights from its upcoming 32nd edition, which will take place from February 29 - March 3, 2024 at the Metropolitan Pavilion in Manhattan.

Since 1993, OAF has amassed a diehard following. At its inception, the mainstream art world had largely sidelined self-taught artists. The fair brought Outsider Art into public consciousness by serving as a launching pad for the careers of some of today’s most acclaimed artists, such as Lonnie Holley, Thornton Dial, Joseph Yoakum, James Castle, Judith Scott, and Janet Sobel, in addition to more recent breakout artists like Della Wells. According to New York Times critic Roberta Smith, “I enjoy most art fairs for their marathon-like density of visual experience and information, but the Outsider Art Fair quickly became my favorite. It helped make art big again.”

OAF Talks presents Culture and the Uncultivated on Tuesday, February 27 at the New Museum with panelists David Byrne, Jean Hanff Korelitz, and Warren Zanes with Carlo McCormick as moderator.

This year’s fair features two Curated Spaces: Expanding the Canon: 50 Years of Creative Growth, which celebrates the organization's 50th anniversary as one of the world’s longest running and most dynamic independent art centers for people with disabilities and feature never-before-exhibited artworks by Dwight Mackintosh, Donald Mitchell, William Scott, Monica Valentine, Aurie Ramirez, William Tyler, and Judith Scott; and Beat Art Work: Power of the Gaze, curated by Anne Waldman, highlighting rarely-exhibited visual art created by acclaimed Beat Generation poets including William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Diane di Prima, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Joanne Kyger. To accompany the latter exhibition, the opening night of the fair on Thursday, February 29 at 6:00pm will feature readings by some of today’s most promising poets including Alan Gilbert, Zoe Brezsny, Rachelle Rahmé, Anselm Berrigan, Lucía Hinojosa Gaxiola, Omar Berrada, Devin Brahja Waldman, and curator Anne Waldman.

Of the 63 exhibitors—including 9 who are showing for the first time—from 32 cities spanning 8 countries, highlights include:

• Donald Ellis Gallery will show a selection of drawings from Indigenous artists from across the United States and Canada, including pioneering artist Parr, celebrated for his minimal compositions depicting scenes of 20th century Arctic hunting.

• dieFirma’s booth will include works by Bill Miller, whose collages combine scraps of vintage linoleum to create vivid, textural images of his surrounding environment.

• Hirschl & Adler will present a range of notable names in the history of Outsider Art, including pioneering figures like Bill Traylor, whose abstracted silhouettes chronicled scenes of the American South between the emancipation and the Civil Rights Movement, as well as James Castle, who created enigmatic imagery inspired by the detritus of everyday life.

• SAGE Studio & Gallery will present work by four artists with intellectual and developmental disabilities centering themes related to fashion, exemplified by Chris Cody’s reimaginings of famous magazine covers.

• Calvin-Morris Gallery’s booth will feature a range of work from lauded icons of the field such as Anna Zemánková, to emerging artists like Noviadi Angkasapura, whose complex drawings detail the spiritual animism of our world.

• Project Onward presents Tony Davis' vibrant scenes of street life, Sereno Wilson’s glittering celebrity portraits, and Paul Kowelewski’s fantastical dreamscapes.

• Exhibiting a diverse range of Inuit Art from the Canadian Arctic, Feheley Fine Arts’ booth includes work by Shuvinai Ashoona, famed for her enigmatic, large-scale drawings documenting dramatic lifestyle changes in the North Arctic.

• Following the opening of her major retrospective at the Menil, pioneering abstractionist Janet Sobel—whose works were said to have inspired Pollock’s Drip Paintings—will be presented by James Barron.

• Coinciding with their 40th Anniversary, Creativity Explored will showcase work by four longtime members of the studio, including new photo-based work by Douglas Sheran.

• Emilia Galatis Projects will exhibit works by First Nations artists of Australia, including the celebrated Ngamaru Bidu, who is known for the complex compositional structures and intricate patterning in her work.

• Forest Grove Preserve’s booth will center the work of South Florida-based artist Owen Lee, whose drawings and poetry traverse vastly different styles, exploring themes of angst, Catholicism, the occult, and classicism.