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Key COVER FEATURE Self-taught artists receive deserved attention in world-class Milwaukee Art Museum exhibition By STEPHANIE BEECHER SOME PEOPLE CALL the creations outsider art, naïve art, or art brut. The Milwaukee Art Museum calls themgenius. More than 200 drawings, paintings and sculptures are on display inside the museum's newest special exhibition, Accidental Genius: Art from the Anthony Petullo Collection.An exciting and eclectic collection, the artworks range from the exquisite to the simple and rudimentary, evoking intrigue in even the untrained eye. Petullo, a retired Milwaukee businessman, spent nearly three decades scouring European and American auction houses and galleries – even visiting artists' homes – to add to his beloved collection. He jokes that it became an "obsession," as he brought home works by some of his favorite artists including Henry Darger, Madge Gill, Adolf Wölfli, Anna Zemankova and Bill Traylor. The works of ex-mariner Alfred Wallis especially appeal to Petullo. "There is no label attached to his work," says Petullo. "He is simply a great British artist." It's a sentiment echoed for each artist in his collection. 8 The exhibition is drawn from 300 works of European and American self-taught artists donated to the museum by Petullo, establishing the Milwaukee Art Museum as a world-class institution for the genre. The self-taught genre has been often contested, leaving art critics and curators struggling to wrap their minds around the craft's defining characteristics. It may be that definitions do not exist. The art, Petullo points out, is "undefined." Self-trained artists "create their art for no one but themselves," according to the collector. They didn't attend prestigious art schools or train with renowned artists. In fact, some of the artists never saw their work sold or placed in galleries. The artists behind the creations include mental patients, a former slave, a WWII survivor and others who have suffered poverty, isolation, and physical disability. Those differences make it that much more perplexing to see the striking resemblances among the works. "You will see similarities in the artists," indicates Margaret Andera, the exhibition curator. "We ask ourselves: 'How does this happen; how did they arrive at such similar aesthetic conclusions?'"