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Lonnie Holley is an artist and musician who was born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1950. His work as a visual artist found support from the Atlanta-based Souls Grown Deep Foundation and appeared in the recent exhibition “History Refused to Die: Highlights from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation Gift” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Musically, Holley garnered praise for a 2013 album, Keeping a Record of It, issued by the label Dust-to-Digital and subsequent releases—including MITH, a moving new album with Holley playing keyboard and singing spiritually searching songs—on Jajaguwar. For the latest “Muses,” Holley wrote to ARTnews with artists who mean a lot to him.

Our research finds that less than three percent of museum acquisitions over the past decade have been of work by African American artists.

Lonnie Holley, who was stolen from his mother and beaten in an Alabama work camp by the time he was 11 years old, found salvation in things the rest of us throw away. Today, “Queen Sugar” author Natalie Baszile reckons with the otherworldly creations and music of one of the South’s most distinctive artists.

The term “outsider artist” has been controversial since Roger Cardinal first coined it in the early 1970s. While it’s still part of the art-world lexicon, for some gallerists, the phrase feels particularly restrictive. “It’s limiting, for sure. You’re forced to start off conversations with prospective clients by defending the work,” says veteran New York dealer Skot Foreman. “It’s a handicap. It’s an obstacle, but one that I think can be overcome.”

An assemblage by Alabama artist Thornton Dial (1928–2016), currently on view at Andrew Edlin Gallery in Soho, smacks of why the descriptors “outsider” and “folk” are pointless and potentially damaging to artists when used as modifiers with “art.” The 1993 work, titled “Looking Good for the Price,” also exemplifies, due to its sheer gorgeousness, exactly why Dial belongs in the Met’s 20th Century Modern and Contemporary galleries alongside the de Koonings and Pollocks, without any caveats like “southern,” “folk” or “outsider” typically assigned to the Black artist, who never received a formal education.

At what point does an artist become so thoroughly absorbed into the mainstream art world that the term “outsider artist” no longer applies? And is it even a useful term in the first place, or does it only constrain our understanding of an artist’s work? These questions are at the heart of the current conversation around self-taught artist Thornton Dial, who was born into poverty in Alabama in 1928 but lived to see his work acquired by some of the most august museums in the world.

Bad habits die hard, but now and then they fade away, clearing the air for a little fresh thought. There is a breeze blowing through the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York just now, where History Refused to Die: Highlights From the Souls Grown Deep Foundation Gift, an exhibition of 30 works by African Americans made in the South between the civil-rights era and the early years of the present century, has swept aside the patronizing labels attached by critics and historians to art they can’t easily account for. Neither folk, outsider, self-taught, nor outlier, this work by little-known artists touched with greatness is exhibited on its own merits. Made mostly of found materials in isolated communities, it speaks eloquently, if paradoxically, of a better country than the one we know or think we know.

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.

WNYC’s art critic Deborah Solomon predicts that many of the artists featured in a recently opened show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art will soon become household names. It’s a high bar, but one that History Refused to Die excites. The exhibition highlights 30 works by self-taught black artists from the American South. This is the first time the Met has exhibited works by these historically excluded artists. By presenting their sculptures, paintings, quilts and other artistic works alongside the Met’s 20th-century collection, the artists—considered Outsider artists for their nontraditional approaches or mediums—are finally being given the recognition they deserve.