AVAM founder Rebecca Hoffberger retires after 27 years of giving voice to outsider art in Baltimore

Rebecca Alban Hoffberger is tied to the train tracks in the old-timey photograph used as an invitation to the American Visionary Art Museum’s gala last fall. A locomotive belching black smoke and emblazoned with the word “retirement” is barreling down the tracks. The train’s cowcatcher resembles a set of giant metal teeth, as if Hoffberger’s retirement from the American Visionary Art Museum, which she incorporated 33 years ago, threatens to chomp her to bits.