Although she was a celebrated artist during her time, an exhibition has not been held for African-American and Southern folk artist Minnie Evans since the 1990s. That will be rectified this November with an upcoming exhibition at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. The Lost World: The Art of Minnie Evans is a nationally touring retrospective featuring more than 100 of Evans’ fantastical drawings, placing them in the larger context of her extraordinary life.
“Minnie Evans said herself that her art is a portal into a ‘lost world,’” says Katherine Jentleson, senior curator at the High Museum of Art. “Through her dreams and visions, she had flashes of past and future worlds, and what this show brings forward is that we are also able to recognize so much about her own very particular world in her art. Not only the visions she described as the driver of her artistic impulse, or the religious beliefs that shaped so much of her life, but also the beauty and ugliness she experienced in her day-to-day world as a Black woman living in a particularly gorgeous coastal environment but within the constraints of the Post Reconstruction 20th-century South.”
Minnie Evans (1892-1987), Untitled (Face Flanked by Angels and Mandalas Collage), 1946-68. Pencil, ink, crayon and oil on paperboard. High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase through funds provided by an anonymous donor to Collectors Evening 2011. © Family of Minnie Evans.
Minnie Evans (1892-1987), Untitled (Scalloped Forms), 1944. Crayon, ink, and graphite on paper. High Museum of Art, Atlanta, T. Marshall Hahn Collection. © Family of Minnie Evans.
The exhibition explores crucial elements of Evans’ life, including her experience of the Wilmington Massacre and the subsequent Jim Crow social codes she endured while working for a set of wealthy Wilmingtonians. “[These experiences] left indelible traces throughout the entrancing drawings she would go on to make,” Jentleson continues. “When the estate where she worked changed hands and opened its grounds as Airlie Gardens, Evans’ artistic production exploded in response to the lush beauty of the outdoor environment where she now spent her days. The exhibition’s chronological arc captures how her work follows the contours of her life changes, from a period of early, hesitant experimentation, into an explosion of color and form, and ending with a period of spiritual transcendence.”
Minnie Evans (1892-1987), Untitled (Airlie Oak, Angels, Faces, Serpents Collage), 1966. Oil, gold paint, crayon and pencil on paperboard. Collection Wendy Williams, New York. Photo by Christopher Burke.
Minnie Evans (1892-1987), Untitled (Four Figures Collage), 1961/1967. Collage, oil paint, crayon and pencil on canvases. Collection of John Jerit.
Jentleson adds that she hopes visitors “will have a new respect for all that Evans achieved over half a century of artmaking, as well as a new appreciation for the mysteries of life and twists of fate that guided her artistic journey and are present every day in the world around us, when we are open to seeing them.”
The Lost World: The Art of Minnie Evans will be presented in the High Museum’s Special Exhibition Galleries from November 14, 2025, to April 19, 2026. —
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