Marcia Mjoseth Semmes
Executive Director

Marcia Mjoseth Semmes brings experience in both the arts and the law to the position of Executive Director. She was an attorney and legal journalist in Washington, D.C., when a visit to the Corcoran Gallery ignited a passion for outsider art. Soon thereafter, she and her husband visited Howard Finster's Paradise Gardens in Summerville, Georgia. She wrote about that visit for the Washington Post, the beginning of a sideline writing about art and travel that included more articles in the Post, the New York Times and Museum News, among others. In 2001, Semmes moved to Baltimore to become Director of Development at the American Visionary Art Museum. While Semmes believes that everyone has an artist inside, hers only came out once to create an artcar covered in 5,000 bottlecaps named Irrational Exuberance. Semmes is a graduate of the all-Colonial schools of William and Mary and the George Washington University Law School.