This spring, the American Folk Art Museum will present Self-Made: A Century of Inventing Artists, an exhibition that takes a critical look at the historical definition of the self-taught artist in the United States from the early 20th century to today. Self-Made examines how artists without academic training have depicted, conceptualized, and identified themselves on their own terms. Foregrounding self-portraits, alter egos, and autobiographies as deliberate strategies of authorship, agency, and artistic intent, the exhibition offers the first sustained museum exploration of artistic self-fashioning within this field with a tightly curated selection of over 90 works. The show will run from Friday, April 10, to Sunday, Sept. 13. Self-Made represents the essence of the American Folk Art Museum, as the nations home of folk and self-taught artists. It also reaffirms our longstanding commitment to expand the story of art in America and around the world by leading projects centered on artists intentions and authorship beyond academic tradition, stated Jason T. Busch, Becky and Bob Alexander Director and CEO. In 2023, AFAM launched a reparative cataloguing project, Rethinking Biography, to strengthen its stewardship of the 20th- and 21st-century art collection. This initiative prompted a broader reassessment of how works are defined, exhibited, and interpreted. Self-Made grew out of that effort, foregrounding artists voices and placing their art at the heart of interpretation, added Valrie Rousseau, Ph.D., curatorial chair and senior curator of 20th-century and contemporary art. Drawn primarily from the museums collection, the exhibition includes drawings, paintings, and sculptures alongside photographs, artists notebooks, and videos. Many of the works are recent or rarely-seen acquisitions, providing new perspectives on both canonical figures and lesser-known artists associated with this artistic area. Works by U.S.-based artists Nicole Appel, Joe Coleman, Henry Darger, Thornton Dial Sr., Morris Hirshfield, John Kane, Bill Miller, Sister Gertrude Morgan, Martn Ramrez, Janet Sobel, and Bill Traylor are presented in dialogue with those of key international figures such as Marcel Bascoulard, Alose Corbaz, Madge Gill, Augustin Lesage, and Adolf Wlfli. Together, these works illuminate a defining period in which artists articulated their creative identities against, and often in resistance to, institutional, social, and cultural constraints. The works on view attest to diverse modes of learning and knowledge production, from professional expertise to community-based traditions, emerging in settings that include affirmative spaces like art workshops for individuals with disabilities, domestic environments, and contexts of forced confinement like psychiatric hospitals and prisons. Self-Made is organized around three methods of self-making: self-portraits, alter egos, and autobiographies, each presented chronologically in a cumulative experience that provides historical grounding for artists personal agency. Self-Made: A Century of Inventing Artists is curated by Valrie Rousseau, PhD, curatorial chair and senior curator of 20th-century and contemporary art, with Suzie Oppenheimer, Ponsold-Motherwell curatorial fellow, City University of New York, Graduate Center, and research associate. For further information, visit www.folkartmuseum.org.