The art world is a clubby place, long dominated by artists who are professionally trained, in sync with au courant theories and market savvy. The artists classified variously as folk, primitive, self-taught and outsider, by definition, lack these traits. Their work is generally considered a field apart, separate but not equal: It is telling that the High Museum, which initiated a department and hired its first curator of folk and self-taught art in 1994, is still one of the few museums to have done so.