Following an 18-month, $10 million renovation, Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art will reopen this spring under a new name. When the museum next opens its doors — scheduled for April 25, during EXPO Chicago weekend — it will be rebranded as the Intuit Art Museum. To mark the occasion, it hosts a major exhibition about artists who migrated to Chicago, taking up the new facility’s entire second floor. According to president and CEO Debra Kerr, Intuit’s new name reflects the organization’s desire for a pithier name and inserts some distance from the term “outsider art.” “We recognize that the term ‘outsider art’ has turned very controversial in the last few years,” Kerr says. “We really wanted to respond to many people, especially younger people, who are turned off by that term and read it as othering. … If you’re on the inside, you think ‘outsider’ is cool, but if you’re on the outside, it feels negative.” Chicago has long been a hub for the self-taught artists championed by Intuit. French artist Jean Dubuffet, who coined the original term art brut (literally, “raw” or “crude” art), was more embraced in Chicago than even in his native France — so much so that the state government commissioned him to create Monument with Standing Beast (1984) for the former James R. Thompson Center. Other famous self-taught artists called Chicago home, like Henry Darger, Joseph Yoakum, Lee Godie, Mr. Imagination, Wesley Willis, Pauline Simon and William Dawson. The renovation triples Intuit’s footprint, bringing the footprint of its 756 N. Milwaukee Ave. storefront space to 18,000 feet. The new three-story facility includes four gallery spaces: two with rotating exhibitions, one showcasing selections from Intuit’s 1,300-piece permanent collection, and a fourth trading off between temporary and collection exhibitions. Also new to the museum are a lounge and activity space it calls the Center for Learning and Engagement Opportunities — or CLEO, a nod to founding board member and former Intuit president Cleo Wilson — and a revamped Henry Darger Room and exhibition. The redesign also makes significant ADA improvements to the facility. Intuit’s front entryway is now wheelchair accessible, with a glass façade that Kerr hopes will entice passersby. “People who are into the outsider field or art brut know Intuit. But there are a lot of Chicagoans who don’t know us,” Kerr says. Rendering of a proposed learning center in the Intuit Art Museum at 756 N. Milwaukee Ave. in Chicago, set to reopen to the public April 25, 2025. (Provided by IAM) The museum has been closed since Labor Day 2023 to make way for the new renovation; $5 million (or half) of the renovation funds came from a round of city Community Development Grants conferred at the end of 2022. The remainder was raised by a capital campaign. Kerr notes that despite Intuit’s obvious local interest, the museum courts board members and donors from across the country. “We’re still one of the few museums in the world that focus exclusively on this art. Now, this work is exhibited at major museums around the country,” she says. “In the old days, guests would experience our two galleries, and then they would say, ‘Where’s the rest?’ We knew that there was a demand.” Hannah Edgar is a freelance writer.