This exhibition showcased the work of Pauline Simon, a Chicago based self-taught artist who created extensive, cohesive bodies of highly original works over long periods of time. Simon’s work had little or no connection with the so-called mainstream or academic art world of the time, and would today be considered an “Outsider” artist. Chicago was, and remains, an important center in the history of 20th-century American vernacular art, and has been home to an array of individuals variously defined as folk, popular, naive, outsider and/or self-taught artists.