"Museums and collectors are showing interest in works by developmentally and intellectually challenged artists, many of whom were nurtured in a vibrant Oakland, Calif., center"
By Michael Janovsky, October 20, 2023
Gallery artist Dan Miller is featured in a profile of the Creative Growth Art Center, and the announcement of a major upcoming exhibition and acquisition of work by SFMOMA.
“…Pieces by Creative Growth stars — Judith Scott, Dan Miller and William Scott (no relation to Judith), among them — are eagerly sought by private collectors and leading gallerists. Some of their pieces sell in upper five figures.
… The public will soon have a big opportunity to contemplate the difference. Starting April 6 and continuing into October, SFMOMA will celebrate Creative Growth’s 50th anniversary with a major exhibition of 113 pieces by 10 Creative Growth artists, all but two of them still working; Judith Scott died in 2005, Dwight Mackintosh in 1999.
…SFMOMA has purchased the entire Creative Growth exhibit, plus an additional 43 pieces from Creativity Explored and NIAD, for $578,000, the largest acquisition of works by disabled artists by any American museum. The museum is dedicating three galleries to the Creative Growth show with all the works remaining in SFMOMA’s permanent collection for inclusion in future exhibits.
Mr. Dan Miller, an autistic person who works wearing a helmet to safeguard against an epileptic seizure, marries swirling patterns in ink and paint with images and words that are sometimes typewritten, sometimes scrawled, but each included for reasons known only to him: “light bulbs,” “electrical sockets,” “drill,” “string,” “metal.” His works are in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Pompidou, MoMA and Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne, Switzerland, and he exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2017. David Byrne of the Talking Heads has a Dan Miller. So does the photographer Cindy Sherman.”
