American Visionary Art Museum: The Great Mystery Show

The American Visionary Art Museum is designed with several galleries on three floors and also includes a third floor restaurant bar with a large rooftop deck for eating outside, office and studio space for an artist in residence, and a large gift shop full of the most tempting, whimsical tchotchkes on the east coast.  A gallery on the first floor and a small suite of galleries on the second house works from the museum's permanent collections.  The bulk of the second floor is dedicated to a group of galleries exhibiting a single yearlong show on a unifying topic.  This year's special exhibition is titled "The Great Mystery Show."  It features works illuminated around some mysterious metaphysical concept.  Usually when one work is shown, a series by the same artist is included.  One of the things that I love about these shows are the number of artists I have never heard of that I get to now know.  Many are best described as reluctant artists not in the talents or output, but in their desire for notoriety.   The shows close in late summer and the new show opens in September of each year. 

"The Tinker" 2017 by Lorann Jacobs

 Sometimes whole galleries, and others just a single wall or corner, are organized around iterations of the larger theme.  The black wall of this one "The Mystery of Why the Bad Things Happen to Good People."  The wall on the left "The Mystery of the Human Heart".  The themes are always generic enough that they allow for an eclectic response throughout the exhibition.

Works in an installation called "Roominous" by Nancy Josephson et. al.

"Earthiycanoom" 2015 by Edward Woltemate Jr.

"The Gateway" 2013 by Antar Mikosz

The detail from a larger work entitled "The Life and Death of Monsieur Sebastian Melmoth: au Theatre du Grand Guigrol" by Paul Laffoley

"Nectar" 2005 by Peter Eglington

All of the originals from Edward Gorey's children's alphabet book The Gashlycrumb Tinies.  The phrase on each page rhymes with the one on the next page revealing the manner of demise for the child depicted there.  It's a ghastly good children's favorite.  For example, K & L: "K is for Kate who was struck with an axe.  L is for who swallowed some tacks."