“Outsider Artists” and Inheritance Law: What Happens to an Artist’s Work When They Die Without a Will?

By Wenni Iben

Introduction

Today, Henry Darger (1892-1973) is known to the world as an artist celebrated for vibrant and vividly-colored drawings that now command up to $800,000. During his lifetime, however, Darger’s talents were unknown to the world; a custodian by day, Darger kept his art to himself. In 1972, Darger moved out of the Chicago, IL apartment he’d rented from Nathan and Kiyoko Lerner for over a decade, leaving behind thousands of pages of drawings, paintings, and collages. Darger passed away one year later in a Chicago nursing home, with no known family or close friends, but his work soon took on a new life in the public eye. 

Darger is often referred to as an ‘outsider artist:’ an artist with little formal training in the arts and little or no contact with the professional art world. Only upon Darger’s death were his works published, promoted, and ultimately celebrated thanks to the efforts of Kiyoko and Nathan Lerner, who salvaged and promoted Darger’s works in lieu of disposing of them with the other items Darger left in the apartment. Since Darger’s death, the Darger works have been shown at the Museum of American Folk Art, The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, and various other museums and galleries. The Darger works now command hundreds of thousands of dollars and have been sold through auction houses like Sotheby’s and Christie’s for hundreds of thousands of dollars.