1900-1980 · New Orleans, USA
A New Orleans street preacher in bridal white who painted the Book of Revelation on window shades and sang it through a megaphone.
The life
Morgan came to New Orleans in 1939 as a missionary, preaching in the French Quarter with tambourine and megaphone. After a revelation in 1957 that she was the bride of Christ, she wore white for the rest of her life. She began painting around this time to illustrate her sermons, ran the Everlasting Gospel Mission from her small white house, and in 1970 recorded a gospel album, Let’s Make a Record, now a cult classic.
The work
New Jerusalem apartment blocks full of angels, self-portraits piloting Jesus through the sky, charts of Revelation on fans, shades, lampshades and toilet-roll tubes, in poster paint, crayon and ballpoint. Scripture crowds every space like flooding water. The American Folk Art Museum staged a major retrospective in 2004.
Why we love them
Painting, preaching, music and costume as one continuous artwork. She was a one-woman multimedia institution decades early.
Go deeper
- Where to see outsider art, our full list of museums and collections.
- The glossary, if any of the terms here are new.
Kindred spirits
Minnie Evans1892-1987, Wilmington, North Carolina, USA
William Edmondsonc.1874-1951, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
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