She’s been called “the P.T. Barnum of the outsider art world,” and a visionary and creative trailblazer in her own right. But Rebecca Alban Hoffberger, founder, director and primary curator of the American Visionary Art Museum, announced July 19 that she will retire in early 2022.
“I consider myself the luckiest woman I know,” said Hoffberger, 68, an Owings Mills resident. “It has been such a fantastic privilege to imagine, birth and to help our American Visionary Art Museum flourish over these past decades, alongside the most wonderful hardworking staff imaginable. Every beautiful thought, opportunity to communally-inspire some greater good we have joyfully undertaken.”
A Stevenson native who as a teenager studied in France with famed mime Marcel Marceau, Hoffberger founded the museum in 1995 with her former husband, philanthropist and art collector LeRoy E. Hoffberger, who died in 2016.
She originally conceived the idea for the AVAM in the mid-1980s while serving as director of development and public relations for Sinai Hospital’s People Encourage People program, which helped return psychiatric patients to the community.
Over the years, the award-winning AVAM has earned a national and international reputation for thematic, groundbreaking exhibitions combining art, science, philosophy and levity with a focus on social justice and self-empowerment.
Hoffberger’s final curated exhibition will be “Healing & The Art of Compassion (And the Lack Thereof!),” which will be on view from Oct. 9, 2021 to Sept. 4, 2022. This exhibition will center on the twin forces of healing and compassion in contemporary society.
The AVAM’s board of directors announced it will conduct an international search for Hoffberger’s successor.
“Baltimore, the State of Maryland, and, in fact, the entire art world will forever be indebted to Rebecca for her vision in creating this groundbreaking living testament to human creativity, imagination and ingenuity,” said Christopher Goelet, the AVAM’s board chair. “She and LeRoy imagined the possibility of a place where intuitive artists could evidence the rich and varied experiences of their everyday lives. They not only made this possible, but Rebecca has since given generations of artists and creators a prominent stage to share their own visions and stories in ways that change perspectives, as well as hearts and minds.”
Guided by its original mandate to promote “visionary art … produced by self-taught individuals, usually without formal training, whose works arise from an innate personal vision that revels foremost in the creative act itself,” the AVAM has been congressionally-designated as “America’s official national museum, education center, and repository for self-taught and intuitive artistry.”
The AVAM’s extensive educational programming provides artistic, experiential-based programs and curriculum for students, families and members of the public, both on its campus and throughout the metropolitan region. In 2018 and 2019, USA Today cited the AVAM as “Best Museum in Maryland,” and the New York Times wrote that the museum “deserves all of the praise that has been heaped upon it since it opened.”
Over the past month, the AVAM won the” Best of the Baltimore Sun’s Readers’ Choice Awards” for Best Museum and Best Tourist Attraction.
Among the myriad awards and accolades bestowed on Hoffberger have been induction into the Baltimore Jewish Hall of Fame; the “Icon Award” from the Daily Record; the Israel Bonds’ Golda Meir Award; the Visionary Award from the American Folk Art Museum; and honorary doctorates from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Stevenson University, McDaniel College and the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design.
On Nov. 20, the AVAM will host a farewell fundraising gala in Hoffberger’s honor. On Apr. 3, 2022, there will be an AVAM “Fan & Member Grassroots” celebration with a 3 p.m. lecture delivered by Hoffberger.
In the future, Hoffberger said she plans to write an original science play about the close friendship between inventor Nikola Tesla and writer Mark Twain.
“I had a vision for a place that would communally embrace people of all ages and backgrounds and make them think, feel, celebrate and deepen each other under one roof,” Hoffberger told Jmore in 2016. “It has worked beyond my wildest dreams.”
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