The American Folk Art Museum invites you to an open house of the new Self-Taught Genius Gallery and museum archives in Long Island City, Queens.

Archivist Mimi Lester will lead a tour of the museum’s repository and share highlights from its holdings. These will include materials by Henry Darger, correspondence by Marino Auriti for his Encyclopedic Palace project, among others.

The program will include a curator-led tour of the exhibition Highlights from Self-Taught Genius (cocurated by Stacy C. Hollander and Valérie Rousseau) from 5 to 6 pm. The exhibition traces the enduring notion of self-taught genius from its roots in the eighteenth century to its iterations in the present through highlights from the American Folk Art Museum’s collection of artists who create outside traditional frames of reference and canonical art history.

The program will include light refreshments.