It isn’t very often that the United States Congress votes unanimously in favor of a piece of legislation, especially one involving art, but that is exactly what occurred in 1993 when it decided that the American Visionary Art Museum (AVAM) in Baltimore should be the country’s official “National Museum, Repository and Education Center for the best in original, self-taught artistry.”

AVAM is often noted in Top 10 rankings of American museums by various travel and leisure magazines; in fact, one year the American Association of Museums awarded it the top prize, placing AVAM among the likes of the Met, MoMA, the National Gallery and the Art Institute of Chicago. The driving force behind this successful but unusual endeavor is Rebecca Hoffberger, a Baltimorean who in the early 1990s began to question the view that art museums should only display the creations of professionally trained artists. Hoffberger’s career as a director of development for a hospital that facilitated psychiatric patients’ return to the community planted the seed for this venture. At the hospital, she witnessed the unusual artistic endeavors of the mentally ill and was impressed by their imagination. Some of these individuals worked in the traditional media of pencil, pen-and-ink, tempera paint and oils, while others employed such everyday materials as matchsticks, toothpicks, bottle caps and eggshells.

When AVAM’s initial three-story structure was built, its exterior surface was plain concrete. While plans for a mosaic were part of the original design, its execution was typically innovative: Funded by a Federal grant and individual contributions, students from a nearby high school with a large drop-out rate were enlisted to carry out the project. Eventually some 250 at-risk pupils volunteered for this free, multi-disciplinary arts program. Using fragments of broken mirrors and colored glass, and working from a professionally conceived design, they produced an abstraction suggesting a swirling galaxy of heavenly bodies, its ever-changing appearance influenced by sun, shade or moonlight cast on the curvilinear surface. The glistening façade provides an unexpected element of sparkle and makes the museum a structural stand-out in an area of less-than-distinguished architectural designs. Plans call for the mosaics to cover the building’s entire exterior surface within the next two to three years.

Other features of AVAM’s exterior grab your attention before you pass through the entrance. Local artist David Hess’ 38-foot-wide “Bird’s Nest Balcony” (a structure into which pigeons fly) is installed beneath the fifth-floor windows of an adjacent building, the Jim Rouse Visionary Center. Under Hess’ work is Tom Every’s (a.k.a. Dr. Evermore) 40-foot steel “Phoenix”; in this piece the Wisconsin visionary artist fashioned the piece in the shape of an upright bird with an extended neck stretching skyward. On the ground is an 8-foot mosaic egg by Andrew Logan, a self-taught British artist. Titled “Cosmic Galaxy Egg,” the design’s array of heavenly bodies placed against a dark blue sky was inspired by photographs recorded from the Hubble Space Telescope. And nearby, 76-year-old mechanic Vollis Simpson’s giant, red-white-and-blue whirligig announces the museum’s presence with patriotic fanfare.