The work of late Wilmington artist Minnie Evans is featured in two separate national exhibitions. One show, "The Visionary Art of Minnie Evans," is currently at the Boston Museum of Fine Art after opening at The Gund museum at Kenyon College, while a larger exhibition, "The Lost World: The Art of Minnie Evans," will open at Atlanta's High Museum of Art in November 2025 before traveling to New York's Whitney Museum in summer 2026. Evans, a self-taught artist who worked at Wilmington's Airlie Gardens and died in 1987, gained initial recognition in the 1960s after being discovered by photographer and art historian Nina Howell Starr, but had not been the subject of a major national gallery show since the 1990s.
This resurgence matters because it brings long-overdue national attention to a significant Black self-taught artist whose visionary, nature-inspired drawings are now being recognized in major U.S. museums. The exhibitions, including a 100-piece show at the High Museum, highlight Evans's expanding relevance in American modern and contemporary art, with over 66,000 visitors already viewing her work in Boston. The attention also underscores a broader movement to give deserving self-taught artists serious institutional exhibitions, as noted by curator Katherine Jentleson, and will culminate in a homecoming show at Wilmington's Cameron Art Museum in 2028.