Elsa Longhauser

Longhauser is from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She attended Antioch College as a young woman. She married and had three children before completing her bachelor's degree in art history in 1971, from the University of Pennsylvania.[4]

Longhauser was director of several galleries in Philadelphia early in her career.[4] She organized an "important show" of outsider art at the Philadelphia College of Art in 1981.[5] In 1993, Longhauser continued her interest in the genre when she organized a touring show of Terry Fox's work.[6] In 1998, she was guest co-curator with Harald Szeemann at the Museum of American Folk Art for a "major traveling show" of works by self-taught American artists.[7][8]

Elsa Longhauser became gallery director at Moore College of Art and Design in 1983; during her tenure there, she was called an "unsung hero of the local cultural scene".[9] In 2000, Longhauser left Philadelphia and became director of the Santa Monica Museum of Art.[2]

Founded in 1984 as the Santa Monica Museum of Art (SMMoA) and reestablished in 2017 with a new identity and home in Downtown Los Angeles, ICA LA builds upon a distinguished history of bold curatorial vision and innovative programming to illuminate the important untold stories and emerging voices in contemporary art and culture. The museum's 12,700 square-foot renovated industrial building—designed by wHY Architecture under the leadership of Kulapat Yantrasast—features ample space for exhibitions, public programs, retail pop-ups, integrated offices, and special projects.[10]

Longhauser married Norman B. Weiner, a doctor, as her first husband; he died in 1977.[11] She remarried in 1983, to William Longhauser, a graphic artist and college professor.[4]

• Elsa Longhauser and Harald Szeemann, eds., Self-Taught Artists of the Twentieth Century: An American Anthology (Chronicle Books 1998). ISBN 9780811820998