by Coline Milliard, ARTINFO UK Published: September 8, 2011 Since 2009, the Museum of Everything, a temporary showcase dedicated to "unintentional, untrained, and undiscovered artists," has become a much-anticipated autumnal rendezvous, with its quirky ex- hibits and exuberant hangs bringing a breath of fresh air to London's Frieze-dominated landscape this time of the year. The museum has just opened its fourth exhibition in the basement and windows of the temple of retail, Selfridges — meaning that, for a few weeks, luxury goods will share the building with 50 busy workshops for artists with developmental disabilities. Share This StoryTweet This Post to Stumble UponEmail to a Friend To mark the return of the whimsical institution, its founder, James Brett, spoke to ARTINFO UK about the problematics of "outsider art," and the ideas behind a museum "of everything." I believe that you are uncomfortable with the term "outsider art." Couldyou explain why? Words are the enemy! By that I mean that often words are an attempt to encapsulate very complicated human behavior. When creative work by people with mental health problems was first discovered and studied at the turn of the last century, it tended to come out of medical institutions and hospitals. It was Jean Dubuffet whoreally artified it, giving it a different name, celebrating it as "Art Brut. That was fine for a while, but eventually created a state of exclusion by inclusion. The term "Outsider Art" then emerged as an English-languagealter- native, coined by the brilliant Roger Cardinal as the title of a book. It worked fantastically in the beginning, because it helped defineand classify something that was quite difficult to put your finger on. Certainly back when I first started looking at this work, I loved the sound of "outsider art." People like me, who tend to be quite counter- cultural, always consider themselves outsiders to some extent. So the name seemed to fit. But it became much too broad. Everyone was an "outsider," including manycontemporary artists, by their own or oth- er's definition. Soon "outsider art" as it is commonly understood was only being curated within itself, i.e. "outsiders" with other "outsiders." Mainstream institutions didn't know — and still don't know — how to show it otherwise, because these artists have no art historical or fine art context. As a result, in the '80s and '90s "outsider" started to mean "outside the art institutions." It functioned a sort of garden shed, faraway from the grand mansion of art. As if that segregation wasn't complicated enough, the term started to take on a pejorative meaning. With these words, you — meaning we — were here on the "inside," calling the artist on the street who couldn't findhis way to a shelter an "outsider." We were describing the person with adisability, who could not speak and therefore created, an "outsider." It's the position of the king on the mountain looking down at the great unwashed — and it's snobbery at best, and bigotry at worst. This seems like a misguided approach, because the work itself, right across the spectrum, is intimate, personal and all about the nature of existence. It reflects what being alive means for the individ- uals makingit — and thereby for all of us. How can that be "outside" anything? What was the starting point for the latest show, Exhibition #4? For this show, we decided to focus on workshops for artists with developmental and other issues. These rare studios are generally artist-run spaces where one artist helps another artist make art. They offer material, time, space and a support structure. The idea is not to teach, because they are not schools, and not to guide, because they are not therapy. They just say: an individual like this can make amazing things with a little help. We're coming back to words here, because if you have an artist who has adisability, or who maybe can't talk, he or she might be able to make art — and that art becomes his or her language. When there is talent andinvention, it can achieve greatness and profundity. Yet so many of these artworks are still not accepted as "art" by most mainstream curators and institutions. They will say, very nicely and with the best intentions, that this is all fine and dandy, but this is something else —something different to art; that these are not inten- tional artists, because they are not out there in the bazaar of art saying they do whatthey do and showing us how they do it. So they equate it with ritual objects, which they are not, with tribal art, which they is not, with artifacts, which they are not — to anything,in fact, as long as it does not threaten that thing we, they, everyone calls "art"! The irony is that many of the artists we show do not even know what "art" is. But they are making things and they most certainly know they are making things. And that is certainly one of the reasons it is so "It's Snobbery at Best, and Bigotry at Worst": Museum of Everything Founder James Brett on the Trouble With "Outsider Art" Sep 2011