About Margaret Bodell
Margaret Bodell is a New England-based consultant and a pioneer in placemaking and creative workforce development programs for people with disabilities. Some of her initiatives include Project Storefronts, City Canvas, and CreateHereNow. Project Storefronts became a national model in economic development after receiving multiple grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and ArtPlace America. In 2015, she was awarded the first Creative Economy Award from the New England Foundation for the Arts.
Bodell has founded alternative galleries and programs in Connecticut and New York City that support inclusion and elevate new cultural contributors, including artists, activists, and community-based public art initiatives. She was among the original founding dealers of the New York's Outsider Art Fair in 1993.
In 1997, she curated the first survey exhibition of New England’s self-taught and outsider artists, Pure Vision, bringing together art programs from across the region that had previously been largely unknown. Over the next three decades, Bodell co-founded Goods NYC, LAND in Brooklyn, East Street Arts, UArts, and Inspire Arts in Connecticut.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Bodell and MaryAnn Fahey launched Umbrella Arts, which became known for its rare presentations of exceptional talent and curatorial experimentation in New York’s East Village, curating monthly events and organizing several large-scale exhibitions at Cooper Union, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and The New Museum NYC.
Bodell’s current initiative, PREview, exhibits artists from New England and New York that are underrecognized in an effort to introduce them to curators, collectors, and new opportunities for exposure. PREview also hosts an Emerging Collectors Series designed to highlight new work while educating collectors on building and managing art collections that reflect their personal and social values.
Located in the historic Bridgeport Projectile Co. building at 800 Union Ave in Bridgeport, CT that later housed the Moore Tools Company, PREview is among good company reimagining this 110-year old factory complex: neighbors include CVRATED by Ryan Matthew Cohn, Poster Conservation, Black Horse Garage, and a growing community of creatives. Foolproof Brewing Co brings local libations, live music, and two original Banksy murals into the mix, cementing the Union Ave complex as an arts destination.
About the Outsider Art Fair
Established in 1993, the Outsider Art Fair is the premier fair dedicated to Self-Taught Art, Art Brut and Outsider Art and takes place annually in New York.