David Owsley Museum of Art Exhibitions

Jan Petry’s Gift: Outsider and Folk Art in the Museum

Roger Brown, American (1941-1997), Theatre, about 1968, oil on canvas, painted wood frame, Gift of Jan Petry, 2025.005.003. © Courtesy of the Roger Brown Estate, School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

September 17 – December 18, 2026
Please note that in addition to Sundays and Mondays, DOMA will be closed October 10-13 for Fall Break and November 25-30 for Thanksgiving Break.

This exhibition features more than twenty-five works of art from the estate of advertising executive, collector, curator, and artist Jan Petry ’61. As part of her legacy, Jan donated her art collection to the Intuit Art Museum in Chicago and DOMA in Muncie. Jan championed outsider and folk art, broad categories often described in contested and overlapping terms as self-taught, visionary, naïve, popular, or vernacular. She also collected artworks from Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central and South America, as she considered their raw expressive power akin to American folk art. Jan Petry’s gift greatly enriches DOMA’s collection of outsider and folk art with the goal of sparking creativity in students and visitors to her alma mater, Ball State University.

The bulk of Jan’s bequest consists of drawings, paintings, and sculpture by American self-taught artists who guided their own artistic paths outside of conventional academic and museum systems. Another portion comprises works by mainstream artists inspired by outsider art. Jan also collected folk art produced by people practicing established stylistic traditions and craftsmanship without formal art training. In addition, Jan’s donation highlights visionary or intuitive art, valued for its distinctive personal imagery and obsessive focus. Some of the regional and national artists represented include Hannelore Baron, Roger Brown, Tony Fitzpatrick, Michael Hernandez de Luna, Louise Nevelson, and H. C. Westermann.

Jan’s gift displays her wide-ranging tastes. In her Chicago residence, she intermingled Pre-Columbian pottery, African sculpture, Burmese carved slingshots, early American portraits, and Maine boat paintings with a variety of modern and contemporary mixed-media works. This heterogeneity reflects the fact that outsider, self-taught, and visionary artists have no common style or content, and few belong to a larger artistic movement. Taken as a whole, Jan’s bequest evokes positive aspects of outsider and folk art, including authenticity, simplicity, naturalness, imagination, and even national pride.