This couple’s trove of ‘outsider art’ is on view at Philadelphia Museum of Art. They share their advice for building a collection.

Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz don’t agree on everything concerning art, but they do share a certain visceral response when looking at a particular piece for the first time.

Sheldon, a corporate lawyer, makes a decision about whether he likes a piece of art within about 10 seconds.

So does Jill, a practicing artist working in clay and wire, who describes her reaction as a particular sensation.

“It’s totally a feeling for me. It’s almost like a real feeling, you know, like in my stomach. It’s not intellectual.”

The Philadelphia couple has a long history of acting on their feelings. The Bonovitzes have been married and collecting art for 56 years, roughly coinciding with the art world’s expansion of interest in the fuzzily defined body of work of self-taught artists. Selections from their vast collection of “outsider art,” as it’s often called, is on view in a show spanning several galleries at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Museums elsewhere own selected examples of the genre’s major artists, says Sheldon, an Art Museum trustee, “but no [other] museum has any kind of breadth, and I don’t think they could ever acquire it unless somebody left their whole collection to the museum, because there just isn’t the material.”

Material the Bonovitzes have, and lots of it. “Of God and Country: American Art from the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Collection,” on view through Jan. 1, reveals but a slice of their collection. The couple has amassed more than 600 pieces by outsider artists, 200 of which they have given — or designated as promised gifts — to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

In addition to its intrinsic artistic value, the Bonovitz show is emblematic of a certain arrival point: “the last chapter of a collector,” as Sheldon puts it.

“The question is, what are you going to do with it? What do you do with your collection? You give it to a museum, but then if you give it to a museum it’s going to get buried. It’ll never be shown. If you sell it, it’s dissipated. It’s not a, you know, it’s not a collection. So you want to solve that problem during your lifetime. And quite honestly, I personally haven’t solved it.”

They haven’t arrived at a “definitive decision” about what to do with the 400 or so pieces of outsider art not already committed to the Art Museum, he said.

“The problem,” Sheldon says, was inspired by Jill’s mother. Janet Fleisher was a pioneering gallerist who operated her gallery in various locations near Rittenhouse Square for four decades starting in the 1950s. A friend of Sheldon’s who knew the gallery suggested that the gallery owner’s daughter was Sheldon’s type. Sheldon called to ask her out. They were engaged six months later.

“I grew up surrounded by art. I’m an artist, so art has always just been part of my life,” said Jill, turning to her husband. “And Sheldon, you took art history in college. And once he was in our family it became part of his life, too. So it’s part of us.”

Philadelphia has its share of great art-collecting couples. Marsha and Jeffrey Perelman focus on contemporary, pop, and postwar art. Mari and Peter Shaw’s collection is eclectic, with deep dives into conceptual art, work by women, Latin American, and local artists. Michael Forman and Jennifer Rice have a wide-ranging, blue-chip collection strong on artists of color. Robbi and Bruce Toll collect 20th century, Impressionist, and Postimpressionist works.

In 2014, Keith L. and Katherine Sachs pledged about 100 contemporary works they had collected over more than 40 years to the Art Museum, including pieces by Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, and Donald Judd.

The spark that ignited the Bonovitzes’ interest in outsider art was a 1982 visit to the Corcoran Gallery in Washington to see “Black Folk Art in America, 1930-1980,” a landmark show, introducing many new names to the public.

“I remember walking into Sister Gertrude Morgan’s room and everything was painted white — they had painted this room, even the floor, I think, was white,” said Jill, referring to the celebrated artist, who dressed in all white after hearing a voice telling her she was the bride of Christ. “So it was just this white room with these bright, incredible paintings in it, and that made a big impression on me.”

Sister Gertrude Morgan is represented in the Art Museum show, which features 76 works by 22 artists, including Martín Ramírez, Bill Traylor, Howard Finster, Joseph Yoakum, and Purvis Young.

The Bonovitzes have also collected pre-Columbian sculpture, ceramics, and Indian textiles (kantha and phulkari). But it’s outsider art that has really grabbed them, as it has many others. The genre now has the attention of museums, galleries, and auction houses as never before, and prices have increased. The Bonovitzes say they didn’t start collecting it with the intention of getting in on the ground floor of something big.

“Never, not at all,” says Sheldon.

Still, even if they didn’t mean to get involved in a genre about to take off, that’s what happened. Is it possible today for budding art lovers to bloom into collectors given prices in the art market?

Jill: “I think it’s hard.”

Sheldon: “I disagree. I think there are artists. You can buy quality work in the hundreds of dollars or, you know, for $1,000 or $2,000.”

At Art Basel Miami Beach, for instance, “there is the major fair and that is very high-end art, but then there are about five or six satellite fairs that sell work at various levels,” says Sheldon. Auctions are another good place to look, he says.

Some guideposts they suggest: Try to develop a relationship with a gallerist who is showing work you like; seek out the work of younger artists; see art — everywhere, as much as you can.

“Your taste develops over time and when you expose yourself to all different kinds of art and even things like dance and things outside the field of regular art,” says Jill.

“Now, what I personally enjoy is finding a niche, because it’s fun to go deep into an area,” says Sheldon.

Deep is where the Bonovitzes have ended up. What to do with it all remains a problem, and one with no end in sight.

Said Sheldon: “I bought about 20 pieces this year.”

“I don’t have that need to own a lot of the art we see. I love looking at it and it really affects me,” says Jill, “but I don’t need to take it home with me. So I have to be very careful when I’m around Sheldon. Because if I really go for something, you know, he buys it.”

“Of God and Country: American Art from the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Collection” is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, through Jan. 1. The museum is closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Admission is $14-$30, free for visitors age 18 and under. philamuseum.org