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Southern Art

Bill Traylor (American, 1854–1949), Untitled (Black Elephant with a Brown Ear), ca. 1939–1940, poster paint and pencil on paper, T. Marshall Hahn Collection, 1997.113.

Since the 1980s, the American South has been recognized as a region with an abundance of self-taught artists, including Thornton Dial, Sam Doyle, and Clementine Hunter. Thanks in large part to major gifts from T. Marshall Hahn, Judith Alexander, and the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, the core of this collection comprises works by Southern artists with roots in states like Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Although the Folk and Self-Taught Art collection includes artists from other parts of the country, it is distinguished by its rich holdings of artists who came from the southeastern United States.