Our inaugural exhibition in the new gallery is built on our extensive collection of Outsider Art: a collection unique among American higher education institutions. The exhibition focuses on the art work of a wandering artist, Ernest Hüpeden, who completed work in 1899 on a mural that covered every inch of a fraternal meeting lodge in then-bustling Valton, Wisconsin. Hüpeden died not long after finishing the mural. What he left behind was a rich, but scattered, trove of paintings on canvas, bottles, cabinets, and everything else he could find, which he frequently exchanged for lodging and food. Since his death, Hüpeden’s work has been celebrated as exemplary work from an Outsider Artist who created beyond the structure of the art world. Thanks to the beneficence of the Kohler Foundation, Edgewood College has been the steward of the lodge, now called The Painted Forest, since 2004. Concurrent with this exhibition, which will travel to the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in fall 2013, the gallery will offer a series of lectures from leading scholars on Outsider Art and Hüpeden himself, as well as a short film about the artist.
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