Nameless Art + Design Show
January 26-28 2024
www.namelessartshow.com
516 W 26th St Suite 315 NYC

NEW YORK CITY — The Nameless Art + Design Show launches during New York Antiques Week as the first art fair dedicated exclusively to American self-taught art and design by unknown creators. Curated by two dozen art and antiques dealers from around the United States, Nameless presents examples of visionary Outsider art and folk art, as well as vernacular design to include functional objects, furniture, lighting and textiles, with pieces spanning American history, from the Seventeenth to the mid-Twentieth Century.

The show will be conducted January 26-28 at 516 West 26th Street in the Chelsea Arts District, with dealers present and all objects for sale.

Championing the anonymous artist, Nameless challenges an arts establishment that devalues extraordinary art for lack of a signature. Driven by homegrown creativity and liberated from the constraints of conventional design, “nameless” self-taught artists of decades and centuries past often worked in obscurity, with many lacking access to formal training and recognition due to their race, gender, disability or class. Today, their legacies more often than not take the form of singular, unsigned works of art, the best of which thwart categorization and disrupt mainstream narratives. Nameless aims to invert the market and institutional forces that continue to discount and neglect this remarkable unidentified material while inspiring collectors to engage it with fresh eyes. Celebrating works made for the joy of creative expression as well as those created out of necessity, Nameless broadens the story of American art through surfacing discoveries, opening paths for scholarship and honoring the genius of countless individuals whose names are forever lost to time.

“Giving these works of art the attention they deserve is to honor the extraordinariness of both the objects and their individual makers,” said Kate Hackman of Critical Eye Finds, a participating exhibitor. “What excites me most is we’re working towards a definition of American art that is more inclusive, expansive and alive.”

Michael Diaz-Griffith’s recent book, The New Antiquarians, points to the surge of interest in Americana among young collectors seeking out the authentic and unexpected. Yet, while longstanding institutions such as the Outsider Art Fair reflect and encourage these growing interests, the market structures that undergird them often overlook extraordinary anonymous work in favor of identified artists. Similarly, major antiques shows grow more limited to well-known material, and online platforms — reliant on keywords — privilege recognizable names and brands.

“This is the perfect moment for the Nameless show,” said participating exhibitor Aarne Anton, a trailblazer in the field of folk, self-taught and Outsider art, who operated the American Primitive Gallery in New York for more than 30 years. “Nameless opens a door into the unknown. And, because this work exists largely off the charts, it offers those with open eyes an accessible way into collecting unusual art and functional objects that spark inspiration and gut-level attraction. This is the opposite of going to Ikea.”

From Texas to Maine, Nameless dealers span the United States, and also generations, from Eric Oglander, the artist and influential dealer behind @tihngs on Instagram, to Susan Wechsler, a longtime dealer of folk art at South Road Antiques. They also bring together diverse and typically siloed categories, to include quilts and textiles from Kellen Tucker and Lorenza Lattanzi of Sharktooth, photography from Stacy Waldman of House of Mirth, vernacular design from Ryan Wagner of Newlyn Lowly and Outsider art from Joshua Lowenfels.

Nameless will take the form of an art exhibition, open to the public, with an installation that opens dialogues between objects across time periods, media and makers.

Dates and hours are Friday-Sunday, January 26-28, media preview: Friday, 4 to 5:30 pm; open to the public: Friday, 5:30 to 8:30 pm; Saturday, 10 am to 8 pm; Sunday, 11 am to 4 pm; general admission fee: $10.

For additional information, www.namelessartshow.com.

American art and design by unknown makers circa 1600-1970
NY Antiques Week 516 W 26th St Suite 315 NYC
Fri 5:30-8:30, Sat 11-8, Sun 10-4
Curated by two dozen art and antiques dealers from around the country, Nameless features outsider art, folk art, vernacular furniture, textiles, photography and more by anonymous and little-known creators across
American history.
Discoveries in American art are Nameless.
@namelessartshow
www.namelessartshow.com
ANONYMOUS WORK . FOLK ART . OUTSIDER ART . PHOTOGRAPHY . VERNACULAR DESIGN . TEXTILES