There were many guilds like this for arts, and crafts during the middle
ages and renaissance. Barrel making was one of them and Wagner got his
idea from a story about the barrel making guild by E.T.A. Hoffman, who
had researched that guild. The guilds set standards, much like our city
codes for plumbing and wiring, but they also worked to keep away
competitions, just as our licensing of plumbers and electricians does.

Music, painting, and other arts, even writing were just coming into the
colleges and universities when I was a student and there was a lot of
furor about that, which in many ways was correct. Scientific research
in the university is about new discoveries and invention. But
Humanities research is about discovering relationships in material that
already exists. One is forward looking and the other backward looking;
the backward looking stance is about new interpretation or understanding.

The argument against having the creative arts in universities stems from
having frozen standards in place. Universities do not foster creation;
they only spread knowledge about creation. I remember vividly the
argument that university doctoral music programs should be about history
and not creation — that a D. F. A. in music or a Mus Doc was a
ridiculous notion and that composer and performer training should be
left to conservatories that were competent to train in those fields.
There is a lot to be said for that notion; the best known university
program is at Indiana University, which does a creditable if somewhat
pedestrian job of training pianists and violinists and conductors, but
the best come from Juilliard and perhaps Eastman. Only those schools
produce world class performers. I must note, however, that power play
enters into this game, even at that level. There is a track that the
top performers get on that is an open secret; they have to spend time
with the right teachers, who “place” them in situations that promote
their careers. The teachers have special reputations and special
contacts with the concert promoters and recording companies. The
promoters and record companies trust these teachers to send up the very
best. Who can say whether it is power play or best judgment that comes
into question here?

It is a truism in academic grantsmanship that it is extremely difficult
to get that first grant, but afterward they come more easily. First,
the grantors don’t always know the field and they use any sort of
screening device they can to weed out applicants (absolute deadlines,
etc.[note that the army and navy rejected pilot applicants with flat
feet or bad teeth in WWII because they had so many applicants, who
abhored trench warfare, that they needed to make judgment less
difficult] ).

After a few grants have been won, foundations base their judgment in
part on the fact that other foundations have awarded the individual and
thus the individual must be worthy — time saving and decision worries
reduced.

I know nothing about art museum curating other than that most of the
curators have academic training in art — again backward looking. There
must be some who can spot a new artist worthy of display, but there must
also be many who use lack of credentialing as a way of reducing the pile
without even spending the time to consider the work. It is most
unfortunate, but life is unfair; I’m not so certain that “genius will
always out.”

But you knew all this. Maybe a detail or two from the music side of
things might interest you. Yvonne and Betsy are visual artists; I am
unqualifiedly not. I am not a visual person and there was no
consciousness of art in my life until I met Yvonne’s family. For me it
is music and literature that captures my imagination, along with
mechanisms and aviation.

While Dubuffet’s term is quite specific, the English term “Outsider Art” is often applied more broadly, to include certain self-taught or Naïve art makers who were never institutionalized. Typically, those labeled as Outsider Artists have little or no contact with the institutions of the mainstream art world; in many cases, their work is “discovered” only after their deaths. Much Outsider Art illustrates extreme mental states, unconventional ideas, or elaborate fantasy worlds.

Outsider Art has emerged as a successful art marketing category (an annual Outsider Art Fair has taken place in New York since 1992); thus the term is sometimes misapplied as a catch-all marketing label for art created by people outside the “art world” mainstream, regardless of their circumstances or the content of their work.