Lectures on Contemporary Creative Activity in the United States and England was presented as part of the The New Museum’s exhibition Outside New York, which presented paintings, drawings, and sculptures by six artists who were living and working outside New York. This was the first in a series of such exhibitions, whose aim was to show New Yorkers some of the extraordinary variety and vitality of the art being made around the country. The artists in this exhibition were not well-known, nor had they been exhibited extensively in their own regions. This was due to many factors, but principally because there were fewer opportunities to show - fewer museums and galleries - the farther away from major art centers one got. The work of each of these artists defied easy categorization, providing welcome, eccentric vision which may in part have resulted from their isolation from a larger art community.¹