Sister Gertrude Morgan (1900-1980) was an African-American self-taught artist, evangelist, musician, and poet who used her diverse talents as a vehicle for and extension of her profound religious faith. Morgan's life and art combine the African-American tradition of autonomous expression with a remarkable inherent artistic sensibility. Gertrude Morgan considered her paintings and decorated objects not art but rather tools for teaching the word of God. Settling in New Orleans in 1939, she became a familiar figure on the streets of the city's French Quarter, where she would set up her easels with paintings illustrating passages from the Bible and preach the Gospel to passersby, often singing in a deep voice and accompanying herself on guitar or tambourine. Most of her paintings are religious in theme; many are literal interpretations of biblical passages from the Old and New Testaments, and her imagery is often richly apocalyptic. She frequently wrote messages or quoted scriptural passages in her pieces, and her text forms an integral and vital part of the total composition. Like many self-taught artists, Morgan began to paint late in life, at the age of 56; she was not inspired by looking at other art or attempting to emulate it. What sets her apart from many in the field, however, is her originality, technical virtuosity, and highly distinctive style that demonstrates sustained artistic growth over a period of more than twenty years. This book will accompany the first comprehensive retrospective of Morgan's work, at the American Folk Art Museum in New York and the New Orleans Museum of Art. It is the first monograph on this important African-American self-taught artist.

Sister Gertrude Morgan: The Tools of Her Ministry

Arts & Photography

Fagaly, William

History & Criticism

Rizzoli

Pop collages featuring commercial products, degenerate symbols of America, a cross-section of a magnolia tree rung with nails, kewpie doll sculptures and papier mâché monkey figures are just some of the artworks featured in this excellent monograph. Henry Darger, Hokusai and Tom Wesselmann spring equally to mind.

Marcus Kenney

Orndorff, Summer

Individual Artists

Savannah College of Art and Design

While growing up in rural Indiana during World War II, William Fagaly began his first venture - collecting and selling earthworms to locals - from which he was christened with a childhood moniker. The Nightcrawler King: Memoirs of an Art Museum Curator is a narrative of Fagaly's life told in two parts: first, his childhood experiences and, second, his transformation into an adult art museum curator and administrator in Louisiana. With a career that coincided with the dramatic growth of museums in the United States, Fagaly adds a unique perspective to New Orleans history, which highlights Louisiana history and establishes how it resonates around the nation and world. Offering a rare and revealing inside look at how the art world works, Fagaly documents his fifty years of experience of work - unusually spent at a single institution, the New Orleans Museum of Art. During this past half century, he played an active role in the discovery and appreciation of new areas of art, particularly African, self-taught, and avant-garde contemporary. He organized numerous significant art exhibitions that traveled to museums across the country and authored the accompanying catalogs. Fagaly's cherished memories and the wonderful people who have touched his life are showcased in this memoir - friends, family, university professors, museum colleagues, art historians, visual artists, musicians, art dealers, art collectors, patrons, and partners - even his cats.

The Nightcrawler King: Memoirs of an Art Museum Curator (Willie Morris Books in Memoir and Biography)

UNIVERSITY PRESS OF MISSISSIPPI

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Books by Fagaly, William