We Are Made of Stories: Self-Taught Artists in the Robson Family Collection

We Are Made of Stories: Self-Taught Artists in the Robson Family Collection traces the rise of self-taught artists in the twentieth century and examines how, despite wide-ranging societal, racial, and gender-based obstacles, their creativity and bold self-definition became major forces in American art. The exhibition features recent gifts to the museum from two generations of collectors, Margaret Z. Robson and her son Douglas O. Robson, and will be on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum July 1, 2022 through March 26, 2023.

This exhibition catalogue is co-published by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in association with Princeton University Press. Featuring more than 100 works and lavishly illustrated throughout, the publication includes essays by Leslie Umberger, curator of folk and self-taught art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and Douglas O. Robson that offer important and critically expansive contributions to our understanding of self-taught artists, and how their individual stories have altered and enriched the complex history of American art.