The city agreed to give the museum a piece of land on the south shore of the Inner Harbor under the condition that its organizers would clean up residual pollution from a copper paint factory and a whiskey warehouse that formerly occupied the site.

[2] The permanent collection includes works by visionary artists like Ho Baron, Nek Chand, Howard Finster, Vanessa German, Mr.

Imagination (aka Gregory Warmack), Leonard Knight, William Kurelek, Leo Sewell, Judith Scott, Ben Wilson, as well as over 40 pieces from the Cabaret Mechanical Theatre of London.

[4] The founder and director of the AVAM is Rebecca Alban Hoffberger, who while working in the development department of Sinai Hospital's (Baltimore) People Encouraging People (a program geared toward aiding psychiatric patients in their return to the community) began to develop the idea for a visionary museum, an idea that eventually blossomed into the American Visionary Art Museum, or AVAM.

[5][6] Her then-husband, LeRoy Hoffberger, a Baltimore lawyer, businessman, and AVAM co-founder, sold items from his collection of German Expressionist art to fund the museum.

The Jim Rouse Visionary Center houses such items as Kinetic Sculptures from AVAM's annual race, Baltimore painted screens, Leonard Knight's “Love Balloon,” DeVon Smith's “World’s First Robot Family,” and an interactive display of automata from London's Cabaret Mechanical Theatre.

[11] AVAM is seeking to raise a $25 million endowment before “exploring the many offers to establish a West coast branch.”[12] Hoffberger has said that “a good museum does more than just have objects that stand there on pedestals.

[15] At the time of the museum's 1995 opening, it had been reported that Hoffberger's rejection of academic scholarship and her refusal to follow tradition perhaps had upset prominent members of the art world.

[citation needed] In her inaugural address, Hoffberger stated that “the American Visionary Art Museum opens its doors of perception not in an effort to make war on academic or institutionalized learning, but to create a place where the best of self-taught, intuitive contributions of all kinds will be duly recognized, explored, and then championed in a clear strong voice.”[16] Since its designation—by a unanimous vote of the U.S. Congress—as America's "official national education center, repository and museum for self-taught, intuitive artistry," the museum has produced 18 thematic "mega-exhibitions" (as of 2012); added The Jim Rouse Visionary Center (in 2004) which more than doubled its exhibition space and provided an expansive, permanent home to its education department; and added new features to the Baltimore cultural landscape (including the Hughes Family Outdoor Theater, the LeRoy Hoffberger Speaker's Corner, and more).

[24] As of 2015, AVAM has hosted 20 annual "mega-exhibitions," all of which “take one grand spirited theme that has inspired or bedeviled humankind from the get-go” in keeping with the 7 tenets of the museum's “Sure-Fire Recipe for Enchantment."