Saturday Short

Today, Saturday Short brings you the preview for the Kickstarter campaign for the 90-minute documentary Bill Traylor: Chasing Ghosts. The film examines the life and art of the famous self-taught creative, who was born into slavery in Alabama in the early 1850s and died in 1949, leaving behind more than 1,000 drawings and paintings.

The documentary, directed, produced, and edited by Jeffrey Wolf, will premiere at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., during next year's exhibition "Between Worlds: The Art of Bill Traylor"; the retrospective will be on view from September 28, 2018, through March 17, 2019. The museum owns a dozen Traylor works that will be included in the show. Leslie Umberger,  curator of folk and self-taught art, plans a major book on the artist.

Bill Traylor Profiles/Artworks at Anthony Petullo Collection of Self-Taught & Outsider Art, Ricco/Maresca Gallery,  Smithsonian American Art Museum, and Whitney Museum of American Art

Julian Stern, "Collecting Self: The Robson Collection at the Smithsonian American Art Museum", Brut Force, March 14, 2017

Allison Meier, "Tracing the Life and Times of Self-Taught Artist Bill Traylor in a Documentary", Hyperallergic, December 12, 2017

"Smithsonian American Art Museum Acquires Major Collection of Self-Taught American Art", December 13, 2016