Co-founder of the Musgrave Kinley Outsider Art Collection, which she started with partner Victor Musgrave, whom she met in 1977, Monika Kinley went on to curate over 30 exhibitions on outsider art, both in the UK and around the world, and remained a fierce advocate for the integrity of outsider art and artists.
Born in Berlin, Kinley fled with her Austrian-Jewish family to Britain, to escape the Nazis, before the second World War, and studied art in Hull before moving to London, where she married the painter Peter Kinley. She began art dealing first with Waddington and then the Grosvenor Gallery, and later, after Peter Kinley’s death, from her own flat.
Kinley spent many years searching for a permanent home for the 800 works in the Musgrave Kinley Outsider Art Collection, which includes pieces by Henry Darger, Madge Gill and Albert Louden. After spending ten years on loan to IMMA in Dublin the collection was gifted to the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, which reopens later this year after a multi-million pound redevelopment. Monika Kinley, who died on 9 March, received an OBE for her services to art in 2012.
See The Guardian for Monika Kinley’s full obituary.
