Fleisher/Ollman Gallery

Fleisher/Ollman has established itself as one of the world’s premiere sources for self-taught art, helping to define the field and to develop major public and private collections. The gallery was among the first to mount major exhibitions of work by Henry Darger, Sister Gertrude Morgan, Bill Traylor, and Martín Ramírez; published early catalogs on James Castle, William Edmondson, and Joseph Yoakum; and continues to represent significant American vernacular artists of the 20th century, including Felipe Jesus Consalvos and the Philadelphia Wireman, for whom the gallery acts as the primary representative.

What began as the Little Gallery in 1952 became the Janet Fleisher Gallery in the mid 1960s, and Fleisher/Ollman in 1998. Since the 1970s the gallery's program has focused on re-contextualizing the self-taught, showcasing this work alongside a contemporary program that features both Philadelphia-based artists and those from further afield. We strive to keep boundaries permeable by not overly emphasizing categorical differences. In recent years we have made efforts to broaden the view of what self-taught art might mean in a contemporary context by exhibiting work by living artists from developmentally disabled studio programs. In this regard, the gallery is the exclusive representative of Julian Martin (from Arts Project Australia, a program in Melbourne), and has mounted group and solo exhibitions of Philadelphia-area disability studio artists.