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Posts from the ‘Museums’ Category

Oct 8

State Fairs: Growing American Craft: Four Questions for Exhibition Contributing Curator Jon Kay

Jon Kay with Jason Baird Jackson
Indiana University Bloomington

Jon Kay is Director of Traditional Arts Indiana and an Associate Professor of Folklore at Indiana University Bloomington. In this exchange I pose questions to him about the new Smithsonian exhibition and catalogue State Fairs: Growing American Craft. Find details about the exhibition at the end of the interview.

Jason Baird Jackson (JBJ):  Jon, you have just returned from a trip to Washington, DC for the opening of the exhibition State Fairs: Growing American Craft, which will run through September 7, 2026 at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery. The Renwick is the part of the Smithsonian devoted to craft. Before I ask you about your role in the exhibition and the associated catalogue (Mary Savig, ed., State Fairs: Growing American Craft. Smithsonian Books, 2025), can you tell me about the opening? What did you see? What did you do? Who went with you? What was most memorable?

Jon Kay (JK): Thank you for the opportunity to reflect on my recent trip to Washington, DC, where I attended the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM)’s after-hours celebration of the exhibition State Fairs: Growing American Craft at the Renwick Gallery. I participated in the event with Keith Ruble, a bowl hewer and longtime demonstrator in the Indiana State Fair’s Pioneer Village (Figure 1). Keith was named a State Fair Master in 2001—well before I became director of Traditional Arts Indiana (TAI)—a testament to the longstanding recognition of his work.

From 2001 to 2021, TAI partnered with the Indiana State Fair to honor its veteran participants through the State Fair Masters program. Each honoree was selected for their skill, excellence, and deep knowledge in their discipline, as well as for their commitment to passing on that knowledge within their communities. The program emerged in the years following the untimely death of Bill Day, an early Pioneer Village demonstrator and Keith Ruble’s bowl-hewing mentor. It was fitting, then, that both Keith’s and Bill’s bowls were featured in the Renwick’s exhibition (Figure 2).

Keith had been invited to demonstrate at the exhibition, but initially declined—he and his wife, Susie, don’t fly, and he didn’t feel up to driving to DC. When he told me this, I offered to take him. He agreed. So, the day before the celebration, Keith, Susie, my wife Mandy, and I made the twelve-hour trip to the Renwick.

On our first morning in DC, we walked to the Renwick Gallery to view the exhibition and deliver several hand-hewn bowls that Keith had made for the museum’s gift shop (Figures 3 and 4). I imagine your future questions will explore the exhibition’s content in more detail, but for now, I’ll say it was a remarkable showcase of crafts by artists who have exhibited, competed, and demonstrated at state fairs—past and present. From pottery and crop art to canned goods and quilts, the exhibition underscored the central role of craft in state fairs since their inception in 1841 (Figures 5, 6, 7, and 8).

The celebration brought together many of the featured artists and their families, including saddle maker Bob Klenda from Kimball, Nebraska; canner Rod Zeitler from Coralville, Iowa; and basket maker Polly Adams Sutton from Seattle, Washington (Figures 9, 10, 11). While the artists enjoyed seeing their work on display, the event also created a meaningful space for state fair craftspeople from across the country to connect and share stories. The atmosphere was one of mutual appreciation. In a culinary nod to fair traditions, the Renwick served corndogs, cornbread, corn pudding, and other fair staples. It was a festive and memorable evening.

The following day, Keith demonstrated his craft at the Renwick. Concerned about wood chips, the events team taped down tarps and provided tables and chairs. Keith’s setup was minimal—just a few tools: a bowl adze fashioned from a ball-peen hammer, a bent gouge, a couple of spoon knives, and a hand-rasp scraper (Figure 12). But what really caught people’s attention was his sassafras stump with luggage handles, which he uses as a chopping block (Figure 13).

Throughout the day, Keith worked on an Indiana-shaped bowl, answered questions, and shared stories. He spoke about his mentor, Bill Day; his wife’s tolerance for him chopping in the living room; and his “mother-in-law” bowls—his name for the ones that crack (Figure 14).

Alongside Keith were two other demonstrators: Martha Varoz Ewing from Santa Fe, New Mexico, who practices traditional straw appliqué, and Samuel Barsky from Baltimore, Maryland, known for knitting custom sweaters of his own design (Figure 15 and 16).

Soon after Keith began, the rhythmic chop, chop, chop of his adze echoed through the gallery, drawing visitors to the demonstration area. From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., the artists worked and engaged with the public. Keith noted that he didn’t even finish the bowl he brought to work on. I assured him that the Smithsonian didn’t mind. There was a steady stream of visitors throughout the day, and the exhibition, as a whole, was very well attended.

JBJ:  I am glad that you and Mandy, Keith and Susie had a great time at the exhibition and its opening events! With the scene set now, can you tell me about your role as one of the “contributing curators” working with lead curator Mary Savig?

Two men standing side-by-side outside a museum building.
A man standing looking at wall-mounted exhibition cases holding carved wooden trays.
A man holding two carved wooden trays shaped like a map of the continental USA outside a museum building.
A group of carved wooden bowls in a sales case.
A ceramic figure of a seated person with many small child-like people all ccovering the large figure's body.
Portrait images of people mounted and lit in a museum environment.
Many jars of preserved fruits and vegetables displayed in an array.
A floral design quilt mounted on a wall.
A man in a western-style hat stands in front of a saddle on display in a museum.
Many jars of preserved fruits and vegetables displayed in an array.
A large brown object made with basketry techniques on display in a museum. The form is of many curved surfaces.
A set of tools sitting on a surface ready for use.
A man uses tools for carving on a wooden stump, used as a bench. Indoors, inside a museum.
A man uses tools for carving on a wooden stump, used as a bench. Indoors, inside a museum.
A woman seated is doing delicate craftwork on a table with craft materials nearby.
A man is seated in a museum environment working on knitting yarn.
A bench-sized seat of wood placed on display in a museum.
A basket of round elements (willow) in a round bowl-like shape.
A vase-shaped wooden object on display.
A blue and whie ceramic vase holding what appear as corn dogs as if the corn dogs were flowers in a vase.
A ceramic vessel of tan pottery with colored designs and two handles on opposite sides.
A man stands in an exhibition space next to two wall-mounted cases with carved wooden trays.

JK: From 2004 to 2022, I coordinated the Indiana State Fair Masters Program as part of my work directing Traditional Arts Indiana. For this program, I conducted oral history interviews, created exhibition panels, and produced documentary films.* My friend Betty Belanus, a retired curator at the Smithsonian Institution’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage and Indiana’s first state folklorist in the 1980s, was aware of my long-standing work with the Indiana State Fair. When Mary Savig, Chief Curator of the Renwick Gallery, began planning the exhibition State Fairs: Growing American Craft, Betty suggested that she reach out to me to help identify potential Indiana craftspeople to feature.

Mary and I met at the 2023 Indiana State Fair, where I gave her a tour of the fairgrounds. The State Fair Masters program, as I mentioned earlier, celebrated the work of longtime fair participants—from apple growers and hog breeders to pie bakers and weavers—highlighting the artistry embedded in fair traditions. While many of these practices have aesthetic dimensions, the Renwick is a craft gallery, so performance-based traditions, such as baton twirling, clogging, and washboard playing, were outside the scope. I joked that while I could make a case for seedstock swine breeding or miniature donkey husbandry as art forms, jars of jelly and pickles were probably as close as the exhibition would get to these more ephemeral crafts.

As we walked the fairgrounds, Mary and I discussed her vision for the exhibition and my nearly two decades of work with the Indiana State Fair. The State Fair Masters program had ended in 2023, so I was especially reflective during our visit.

Our first stop was the Indiana Arts Building, formerly known as the Home and Family Arts Building. In the basement, baked goods and canned items were exhibited; the main floor featured quilts, needlepoint, weaving, crochet, and knitting. The building also featured paintings, photographs, and other artworks that had been entered in various fair competitions. I introduced Mary to longtime building coordinator Nancy Leonard, and then we talked with Mary Schwartz, a 2013 State Fair Master who was recognized for her needlepoint artistry.

Next, we visited the Pioneer Village, located across the fairgrounds and surrounded by antique tractors and historic farm implements. The Village showcases farming practices, music, and crafts from Indiana’s Depression Era and earlier. I introduced Mary to the wheelwrights and blacksmiths, and Charlie Carson who trains oxen and makes yokes. In the Pioneer Village Building, Mary talked with quilters, weavers, and broom makers—but what truly captured her interest was the bowl hewing.

I had recently curated an exhibition at the Swope Art Museum in Terre Haute, Indiana that featured several bowl makers who demonstrated at the fair. I introduced Mary to Keith Ruble and Blaine Berry, both of whom would later be featured in the Renwick exhibition. I also secured a large sassafras bowl made by Bill Day for the exhibition. I loaned the gallery a tulip poplar bowl shaped like Indiana, which Keith had made for me for the 2016 Bicentennial of Indiana Statehood. In addition to recommending artists, I shared ideas for potential craft inclusions. Mary ultimately acquired a settee and two Windsor chairs from Blaine, which the Smithsonian purchased (Figure 17).

By the end of our visit, Mary had identified about ten potential Indiana artists for the exhibition. A few months later, she told me that she needed to pare down the list, because the exhibit included more craftspeople from Indiana than any other state. The final roster included bowl maker Keith Ruble, chairmaker Blaine Berry, basket weaver Viki Graber, woodturner Betty J. Scarpino, and potter Kelly Bohnenkamp, who loaned her whimsical “corndog vase” (Figures 18-20). The exhibition also included works by two historical Indiana craftspeople: a vase by Mary Overbeck (1878–1955) and the large bowl made by Bill Day (1915-1999) (Figure 21).

JBJ:  I am glad that you could help the craftspeople of Indiana gain recognition from this major exhibition at a key world museum devoted to craft. I mentioned the catalogue for the exhibition at the start. Can you tell readers what they will find in that catalogue and what your contribution to it is?

JK: The exhibition catalog, State Fairs: Growing American Crafts, is a companion book published by Smithsonian Press (Savig 2025). It connects the narrative threads of the exhibition, as outlined by editor Mary Savig in the introduction. The chapters then highlight key themes, including “4-H and Youth Participation,” “Creative Arts Competitions and Women’s Collectivity,” “Indigenous Fashion Shows,” and “Studio Craft Competitions.” My chapter ended up being more focused than the others, centering on the Pioneer Village at the Indiana State Fair.

Mary and I initially discussed framing the essay around creative aging in heritage events, but ultimately, she felt a tighter focus on the Pioneer Village would serve the book better. For my chapter, I drew on decades of interviews with participants in the Pioneer Village. In fact, I had to work hard to stay within the word count. I hadn’t realized at the time that mine would be the only chapter focused on a specific event. While the other essays explore broader themes across multiple fairs, mine is grounded in my long-term work at the Indiana State Fair—and especially in the Pioneer Village.

I feel fortunate to have served as a contributing curator for the exhibition. Much of my role involved sharing nearly two decades of research into craft traditions at the Indiana State Fair. I’ll be returning to the Renwick Gallery this winter to participate in a panel discussion, where I’ll speak about my work in arts and aging, drawing on experiences with longtime fair participants, including those in the Indiana Arts Building and across the fairgrounds.

JBJ: The new exhibition, book and public program series at the Renwick Gallery is one of scores of projects that you have pursued related to craft and craftspeople in Indiana, in the United States, and overseas. Looking ahead, what is your next big project related to craft all about?

JK: As you know, I tend to keep several projects going at once, so questions like this always make my head spin a bit. I recently submitted a manuscript for a book on Indiana basketry, which is currently under review at the press. It examines the social function of craft in everyday life and the cultural changes that have undermined it.

In addition, I co-authored a new, public-facing book, Lifelong Arts: A Creative Aging Handbook, for the Indiana Arts Commission. The Indiana Arts Commission will publish it. I wrote it with Stephanie Haines and Anna Ross, and it explores creative aging practices. The book is based on a series of public workshops and trainings that we conducted across the state in 2022-23. Lifelong Arts will be my third public-facing creative aging guide. This one is a more general guide to arts and aging. In contrast, my other two projects were regional and based on traditional arts and everyday creative practices: Memory, Art & Aging (Kay 2020) and Everyday Arts in Later Life (Kay, Jackson, and Islam 2024).

So, I am in the starting phase of two larger projects. One explores bowl hewing in Indiana, which connects to Keith Ruble, Bill Day, and the State Fair. While this tradition is deeply rooted in Indiana, I’ve also discovered that bowl hewing is part of a broader international network of green woodworkers, toolmakers, and heritage events. Many of these makers speak about how the craft supports their emotional, physical, and social well-being, which aligns with my ongoing interest in craft and wellness. The second project, which may eventually merge with the bowl hewing project, is a scholarly study on “Folklife and Creative Aging” (Figure 22).

Of course, my academic research runs in parallel with (and within) my work directing Traditional Arts Indiana at Indiana University. TAI continues to operate the TAI Apprenticeship and the Indiana Heritage Fellowships. I am also exploring the development of an online version of TAI’s Community Scholar Training. It’s a lot to think about and seeing it all laid out like this feels a bit daunting.

In closing, Jason, thanks for your ongoing interest in craft, museums, and folklore. It was great to reflect on this moment and to think about my years at the fair and the exhibition at the Renwick. I know that the exhibition has helped me approach the fair with fresh eyes and to see the many crafts and communities that the fair has helped cultivate.

JBJ: Thanks Jon for sharing these valuable reflections and thanks for all that you do for Indiana and its peoples.

Learn more about the exhibition State Fairs: Growing American Craft online at: https://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/state-fairs 

A version of this post will be preserved in the Published Work and White Papers collection of the Material Culture and Heritage Studies Laboratory community in IUScholarWorks. [Update: See https://hdl.handle.net/2022/33755 for the archival version.]

Notes
*Twenty documentary videos profiling State Fair Masters are accessible via Indiana University’s Media Collections Online. See the “Traditional Arts Indiana’s State Fair Master Documentaries” collection via https://media.dlib.indiana.edu/.  

References Cited

Kay, Jon, ed. 2020. Memory, Art, and Aging: A Resource and Activity Guide. Traditional Arts Indiana. https://hdl.handle.net/2022/33323

Kay, Jon, Joelle Jackson, and Touhidul Islam. 2024. Everyday Arts in Later Life. Traditional Arts Indiana. https://hdl.handle.net/2022/33322

Savig, Marty, ed. 2025. State Fairs: Growing American Craft. Smithsonian Books.

May 6

Museum Practice in Folklore Studies (a.k.a. Museum Methods): Spring 2024

There are too many things needing to be written about. Many of them are grim. Here I want to begin the work week with positivity.

This past semester, I taught one wholly new graduate course and one substantively new undergraduate course. I do not yet have confirmation from course evaluations, but I think that they both turned out well. I will discuss the graduate course separately. The undergraduate course, which covered material that is very familiar to me, was FOLK-F 406 Museum Practice in Folklore Studies (a.k.a. ANTH-A 405 Museum Methods). ANTH-A 405 has been on the books for decades but has been very rarely offered. The parallel course in FOLK was created by me prior to the pandemic, but it was only this semester that I could offer first it. This course was thus substantively new, although I drew in presenting it on past museums courses that I have taught.

As I taught these two courses jointly, I was very pleased that the two sections (ANTH and FOLK) attracted equal numbers of students. Many the participants were major or minor students in both departments, thus they—like me—have a foot in both fields and an interest in their points of intersection. Museum ethnography is one of those points of intersection. This class met no general education requirements. Students were there because they wanted to learn the material and that made for a wonderful course. In twenty years on the Indiana University faculty, I have never taught a course that was comprised mainly of majors or minors in my fields. What a joy that was! Even the students distracted by the end of their senior year and their rapidly approaching graduation, were a pleasure to engage with each week. It is gratifying that a significant proportion of the students in the course were already gaining museum experiences in concurrent museum practicum and that many are now moving on to further work in museums or in museums-related graduate programs.

As I got acquainted with the students and rose to their level, the course changed as it went. As planned, the course included museum work basics and independent research with museum collections objects, but the final course session on critical practices in museum work and museum studies shifted considerably. The topics planned remained the same, but my method moved from lecture and lecture-discussion to freer discussion of key news stories about important or exemplary developments in the present-day museum work. Many of these came from the New York Times, which has been doing particularly good work related to museums in recent months. These were in areas such as repatriation and restoration, digital practices, heritage politics, museum censorship, the finances of museums, community consultation, museum audiences/visitorship, and museums and social change. It was a pleasure to discuss and debate the big issues with these students. They arrived in the course ready and able to engage and were nearly all eager to do so. I am proud of them and thankful for the opportunity to study and learn with them. I wish all of them well and I congratulate the graduating seniors among them.

A heuristic for assessing temporary exhibitions in museums relative to the place of museum collections within them, the relevance to institutional mission, and the role of research within the exhibition.

Apr 21

Education Requirements and Museum Jobs (April 2024)

This week in my undergraduate museum practices course, we will discuss museum careers (and graduate school). For the first time since 2017, I have again done my calculations based on the AAM (American Alliance of Museums) job ads currently posted (N=140). The big story is the rise of the “no degree requirements listed ad.” This can be for the hourly gift shop staff job, but very prominently it is also for the $200,000+ director job. Also in the mix to some degree is the move by governments to drop degree requirements. All that noted, the basic trends remain roughly the same, with the bachelor’s degree being expected for the full breadth of jobs and the master’s degree being valued in domains where one would expect this (collections-related, exhibitions content-related, education-related, accounting). The doctorate in education seems to be showing up in education leadership roles and the Ph.D. remains key for research-intensive and well-known curatorial programs (but the master’s is by far the more common curatorial degree).

No Education Requirement Stated (12%); High School Diploma Required (1%); High School Diploma Required, Bachelor’s Degree Preferred (1%); Associate’s or Bachelor’s Degree Required (1%); Bachelor’s Degree Required (44%); Bachelor’s Degree Required, Master’s Degree Preferred (16%); Master’s Degree Required (13%); Master’s Degree Required, Doctoral Degree Preferred (11%); Doctoral Degree Required (1%).

Mar 24

Longjia [Miao] Village

[Suojia (a.k.a. Suoga) [Longhorn] Miao Eco-Museum], Longjia [Miao] Village, Suoga Miao, Yi, and Hui Ethnic Township, Liuzhi Special District, Liupanshui [Prefecture-Level] City, Guizhou, China.

[Administrative Village to be Determined]

Visited March 16, 2015.

This is the eleventh post in the series: Villages and Towns of the Southeast Asian Massif.

Approximately: 26° 26′ 32.892″ N, 105° 25′ 0.1554″ E

Mar 19

Nannuoshan [Hani] Village

[Hani Culture Park,] Nannuoshan [Hani Administrative] Village, Gelanghe Hani Ethnic Township, Menghai County, Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan, China.

Visited December 26, 2023.

This is the sixth post in the series: Villages and Towns of the Southeast Asian Massif.

Approximately: 21° 57′ 34.77″ N, 100° 36′ 1.398″ E

Nov 13

Article: “Basketry among Two Peoples of Northern Guangxi, China” in Asian Ethnology 81(1-2)

I am very happy to note the publication of “Basketry among Two Peoples of Northern Guangxi, China” in the latest double issue of Asian Ethnology. This article is one that I co-wrote with my friends and collaborators Lijun Zhang (first author), C. Kurt Dewhurst (third author), and Jon Kay (fourth author) and it is based on work undertaken by a much larger bi-national team within the “Collaborative Work in Museum Folklore and Heritage Studies” sub-project of the broader “China-US Folklore and Intangible Cultural Heritage Project,” a collaboration (2007-present) of the American Folklore Society and the China Folklore Society.

I am a huge fan of Asian Ethnology, a wonderful open access journal now in its 81st year. Check out the huge volume that our paper is a part of, Find Asian Ethnology online here: https://asianethnology.org/ and also in JSTOR

Find our article here: https://asianethnology.org/articles/2386

Find Jon Kay’s companion article here: https://asianethnology.org/articles/2387

His project is distinct from ours, but find William Nitzky’s article (also) on the Baiku Yao people today here: https://asianethnology.org/articles/2384

This is a image of page one of the published journal article "Basketry among Two Peoples of Northern Guangxi, China. It shows the author's names, the article title, an abstract and the keywords along with the journal's logo, which are a group of line drawn masks from Asian traditions.
A image of page one of the typeset version of the scholarly article “Basketry among Tow Peoples of Northern Guangxi, China” published in Asian Ethnology.

Oct 30

Museum Anthropology Review Volume 16: Studies in Museum Ethnography in Honor of Daniel C. Swan

Social media is changing again and it seems like a good time to give Shreds and Patches more love and attention.

My collaborator and special issue co-editor Michael Paul Jordan and I are very pleased to announce the publication of a new double-issue of Museum Anthropology Review titled Studies in Museum Ethnography in Honor of Daniel C. Swan

Find the new collection in honor of Dan in Museum Anthropology Review online here: https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/mar/issue/view/2153 Thanks to all of the authors, production staff, publishers, peer-reviewers, and helpers who made this collection possible.

Daniel C. Swan pictured wearing glasses and holding a water bottle while standing in front of a large building and a plaza filled with many tourists. He wears a plaid button-down shirt in blue and white and he looks towards the camera while the other people in the scene face away from the camera as they move into the plaza and the building beyond. The sky is vivid blue with streaks of high white clouds. The tile roofs of the buildings behind the subject are orange.
The above image appears in the introduction to the special collection “Studies in Museum Ethnography in Honor of Daniel C. Swan” with the following camption. “In the days following the Seventh Forum on China-US Folklore and Intangible Cultural Heritage and on the eve of the global COVID pandemic, Daniel C. Swan was one of 19.3 million reported visitors to the Forbidden City (a.k.a Palace Museum) in 2019. May 21, 2019. Photograph by Michael Paul Jordan.”

Jun 11

Lessons of Accountability

Below find the second of a series of guest posts offered in celebration on the occasion of our colleague and friend Daniel C. Swan’s retirement from the University of Oklahoma, where he has served with distinction as a Professor of Anthropology, Curator of Ethnology, and Interim Director of the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History. Reflecting here on an aspect of Dan’s work and his personal impact is heather ahtone, senior curator at the First Americans Museum. She served previously as James T. Bialac Curator of Native American and Non-Western Art at the University of Oklahoma’s Fred Jones, Jr. Museum of Art. This series of guest posts has been organized in partnership with Michael Paul Jordan. –Jason Baird Jackson

Lessons of Accountability

by heather ahtone

As a young professional in 2012, Dan Swan was one of the first in the museum community who helped me feel like a professional. That may seem redundant, how does one not feel like a professional if one is? But I think that for many Native folks coming into the museum field, like myself, it is common to feel like an imposter. I came to my professional field as a matter of accidents and curiosity, with few mentors in the actual field. I didn’t have a cadre of Native folks to help me navigate the museum field’s history of colonialism, authoritarianism, and dismissal of Indigenous agency. Stepping into an institution as the only Person of Color at a level with some capacity for bringing an Indigenous presence into the conversation, I felt a significant amount of pressure. Those pressures were purely internally driven. I could have gone with the flow. But it was clear to me that I had a level of accountability. It would never be imposed by the institution but would always be present for me as a lone representative as I assumed responsibilities curating the collections representing all the brown folks (my position was as curator of Native American and Non-Western arts).

The first part of the lesson of accountability Dan taught was mutual respect. It was a hard lesson emotionally. I wanted to earn a doctoral degree and needed a committee member. I asked Dan to join my committee. He declined. In the most Dan-like way, he declined by expressing that as a respected colleague it was inappropriate for him to be in a position of power over my scholarly work. I can only say that I was broken-hearted by his decision. But I was humbled by his acknowledgment of me as an equal (of sorts – he will always be someone I look up to!). His expression of respect gave me a courage that became a driving force in my work. It made me see that I also had responsibilities as an equal to him–not as a measure of myself, but as a measure of all the goodness he has done for our Native community. That courage was needed to serve the Native folks who were not standing in those meeting rooms, sitting at the table, and having a voice (quivering as I often felt). His respect held me up on many days.

The second part of the lesson of accountability was service. As I assumed the responsibilities and provided leadership in my curatorial position, I pushed myself and the institution to meet the accountability I felt on behalf of the Indigenous community. This appeared to me as service, until the museum field response became an unquenchable demand for more. More work. More writing. More of my voice to fill the silence of Indigenous invisibility. And this was how I learned about my real service to the field. I witnessed Dan creating opportunities for his students, for his peers, and for me. I realized that my true service to the field would not come from the “doing.” Service would come from putting others forward and nurturing a broad voice from the community, not just my voice. He taught by example that the work could never be for myself, but always to serve the community. He wasn’t the only one teaching me this point, I have to acknowledge that I needed two teachers for this particular lesson, Dr. Gregory Cajete was the other. Between the two, I found that truly serving the community was found in nurturing a broader body of servants to our Native community.

The final part of the lesson of accountability was in speaking the truth. Dan has been a champion for my projects for a long while. During one project, fairly early in my curating path, Dan used my work as a teaching tool for his students. He was openly proud of the project, and I appreciated that. It was during a class visit with his students after visiting the exhibition that we discussed openly the successes and failures of the project. The successes were fairly public and I had more practice speaking to these. In conversation in front of his students, Dan asked questions about the failures. This was a challenge to me in the moment. I had less practice speaking to my failures openly. I’m not sure if I spoke the whole truth in that moment, I am sure I was incredibly uncomfortable. But the discomfort with the questions exposed to me that this was where the real learning rests. That when we can honestly assess our failures, we lay a path to confront them and genuinely improve our practice. I have since incorporated my failures with my successes as a part of my public speaking practice. The response to the failures has never ceased to be one of people embracing that truth as “refreshing” and as a moment of strength. My grandmother’s lessons on honesty laid a foundation that Dan’s lesson on truth have fortified.

With all that said, I have learned so many more lessons from Dan. I will always be grateful for his kindness, generosity, and support. He has never let me take the easy path. Our conversations are a source of personal joy and intellectual growth. I believe I will be learning from him for years to come. And if I have listened to what he taught well, I will be able to pass those lessons along to another generation for even more.

God bless you, friend, enjoy all the beauty that the world has to offer.

americanindianculturalcentermuseum

An in-process photograph of the First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City. FAM is slated to open in Spring 2021. FAM press photograph via https://www.indianz.com/News/2018/03/19/american-indian-cultural-center-and-muse.asp

 

 

 

May 6

Sowei Mask Repairs in Focus: Material Interpretation and Object Itineraries (Lecture)

2020-05-14 Otto Lecture

Sowei Mask Repairs in Focus: Material Interpretation and Object Itineraries

A Material Culture Studies Lecture by Kristin Otto

Thursday May 14, 2020
2–3 p.m. (EST)

Email Jason Jackson at mchsl@indiana.edu to request Zoom details.

Following the emergence of repair as a topic of interest for material culture scholars, this talk examines the significance of repair for the “lives” / biographies / itineraries of ethnographic material culture in museum collections. Sowei masks (also known as Sande or Bundu masks) are among the most widely collected and easily recognizable objects from Africa in museum collections around the world. Repair proved to be a common experience for the masks as they circulated from performative contexts in West Africa into Western markets, collections, and institutions. Through in-depth case studies of five sowei masks in museum collections around the world, Otto examines how repair shapes the material and immaterial lives of the masks in new contexts and transactional spaces.

Kristin Otto is a Ph.D. candidate in Indiana University’s Department of Anthropology and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. Her work as a museum anthropologist and curator focuses on how processes of making and repair impact our understandings of museum collections and material culture.

Sponsored by the Department of Anthropology and the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology.

Feb 23

New Project Pages

Here on Shreds and Patches, there is a new menu item for Projects. The Projects landing page gives a quick overview of, and links to, some of key projects that I am involved in and the menu can also lead visitors directly to project pages. Right now there are project pages for the “Museum Ethnography in the Native South” project (2020-present) and two sub-projects of the larger “China-US Folklore and Intangible Cultural Heritage Project” of the American Folklore Society and the China Folklore Society. These are the “Collaborative Work in Museum Folklore and Heritage Studies” (2017-present) and “Intangible Cultural Heritage and Ethnographic Museum Practice” (2013-2016).

IMG_7750

Near Old Dali, Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan, China, May 2019.

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