Learn more at: www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk
The Whitworth is home to one of the most significant public collections of Outsider Art in the UK, The Musgrave Kinley Outsider Collection.
It consists of over 1153 individual artworks by over 129 artists, brought together by curator Monika Kinley and gallerist and curator Victor Musgrave over a period of 30 years (1979-2010).
Feeling that most contemporary art was ‘bland and supine in the well-crafted chains of its own making’, Musgrave and Kinley chose instead to seek out and collect artworks that they felt were genuinely original and intuitive: art that ‘tapped into the mains electricity of the imagination’. These are works by so-called ‘Outsider artists’, strikingly original artworks produced by individuals belonging to no movement or school, who are self-taught and marginalised from the ‘mainstream’ art world.
Works in the collection include a Henry Darger triptych, Aloïse Corbaz’s Palais Rumine, Madge Gill’s spiritualist ink drawings, Albert Louden’s pastels, Judith Scott’s woven sculptures and significant works by Pascal Verbena, Scottie Wilson and Carlo Zinelli.
