ABSTRACT
Christina McCollum examines a public space given the category of Outsider Art. Kenny Hill’s Sculpture Garden in Chauvin, Louisiana, has become an understated symbol of pride for an ecologically endangered community in the American South, although without Hill’s permission. Hill, who is now infirm, abandoned the site 15 years ago. McCollum’s concern in this chapter is with the afterlife of an Outsider environment, and it poses significant questions. If it was the artist who imbued a site with authenticity, how is the site preserved after the loss of that energetic epicenter? What is at stake in the reanimation of an environment after the artist has gone? What would it mean to let an environment fall into decay? How do objects become immanent metonyms of authenticity in these environments? How are these sites, originally outside of privileged economies of time, money, and place, recast as generative engines by cultural insiders?
