Smithsonian artist Leon Kennedy. In 1997 the Smithsonian Institution purchased the 220 most significant pieces from the Rosenak collection including an outstanding 1995 Leon Kennedy bedsheet painted with numerous figures. The Folk Art Messenger (1997 Vol.10 No.3) reported this acquisition, involving millions of dollars, makes the The National Museum of American Art the world's preeminent repository for American self-taught art. "It is our desire to see them as part of the history of 20th-century American art," said Chuck Rosenak. Mentioning Kennedy, the article goes on to note these works were the first American collection exhibited at the Collection de l'Art Brut in Switzerland, which "testifies to its quality and uniqueness." This Leon Kennedy masterwork now resides at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, while photos of Kennedy and other materials are stored at the National Archives in Wasington, D.C. Kennedy is also included in Betty-Carol Sellen's important survey, "Self Taught, Outsider, and Folk Art." In 2006 two of Kennedy's paintings formed a major part of the yearlong exhibit at Baltimore's prestigious American Visionary Art Museum, "Race, Class, Gender," which travelled in 2007 to the Lowell Revolving Museum.
