The marketing of self-taught art - otherwise known as folk, outsider or vernacular art - is one of the commercial success stories of the 1990's.

It has been designated by Congress as America's national museum for self-taught art.

"It's inconceivable," says Frank Maresca, a New York gallery owner who specializes in self-taught art.

Even more important, in the last 20 years self-taught art has developed its own institutional infrastructure.

Sudduth was one of the early masters of southern self-taught art.

A Collection of folk art, also called self-taught or vernacular art.

Conventional self-taught art is obviously not what this exhibition stresses.

They are also the first youths whose work is featured at Ricco/Maresca, a commercial gallery that specializes in American self-taught art.

The Museum includes a curatorial department specifically devoted to the field of self-taught art, a distinction unique among North American museums.

Often used as a spicy alternative to "folk art" or "self-taught art," it is essentially a marketing peg but one that sometimes hits the mark.