Skip to content

Posts from the ‘TAI’ Category

Apr 8

Help! Really. The Mathers Museum of World Cultures Needs You!

An Indiana University event known as #IUDay is nearly here. Scheduled for Wednesday, April 10, 2019, #IUDay is a celebration of Indiana University. It is a day of special events, of sharing stories of the university, and for gathering together friends and supporters to work together to achieve special goals. Last year, in the days right before, and on, #IUDay, sixty-one friends donated to the Mathers Museum’s first #IUDay crowdfunding campaign. Working together, they contributed funds to enable us to launch Traditional Arts Indiana’s Indiana Heritage Fellowship program. Ours was a successful first effort. It was so successful that the Indiana University Foundation encouraged us to take on two campaigns this year, a fact that means that we are seeking to raise more than double the level of funding we received last year. This is an exciting prospect, but it is also daunting. I hope that everyone who reads this post can help us meet our goals. They are good goals. Let me describe them.

Building on the success of last year’s effort launching the Indiana Heritage Fellowship program, we are this year seeking support for its companion program, also new. This is the TAI Master-Apprentice program. The goal here is $2500 and, as of the moment that I am writing this, we have raised $567 from 11 generous donors. With two days to go, we really need your help. Please consider making a gift large or small. Last year 61 donors supported our efforts and we are eager to (=need to) increase this number this year. The good news is that, when successful, this effort will do great work across Indiana communities, providing resources and support for diverse tradition bearers to transmit their skills and knowledge to eager apprentices. This work benefits Indiana communities, the state and ultimately the whole country. If you would like to learn about the first class of TAI masters and apprentices, check out this year’s booklet and learn about the beadwork artists, netmakers, drummakers, ironsmiths, and ballet folklórico performers working together this year.

To learn more and to, if you chose, make a contribution, you can find this campaign site here: https://iufoundation.fundly.com/support-the-next-great-folk-artists

Our other campaign aims to fund K-12 field trips to visit the Mathers Museum on campus in Bloomington. Field trips are an impactful highlight for most school students, but they have become increasingly rare for most students, as budget cuts continue to take their toll. Visits to the Mathers Museum introduce students to cultural diversity worldwide and in Indiana and the US. Museum visits also introduce students to the commonalities of the human experience and to the disciplines–folklore studies, anthropology, ethnomusicology, history, etc.–that build up our understandings of human existence, past and present. As of the time of this writing, this campaign has gathered $1220 from 18 friends of the museum. Here too our goal is $2500, thus we need your help in this effort also. (This funding will enable us to provide the funds that schools need in order to come to the museum and engage with our programs and exhibitions.

To learn more and to, if you chose, make a contribution, you can find this campaign site here: https://iufoundation.fundly.com/mathers-museum-of-world-cultures

Thanks to all who have given so far. Thanks to all who will consider giving. Whether you give or do not give, please, please share these links online and urge others to support the museum’s work. When an #IUDay link is shared online it results in an average of $97 dollars in support, so even if you cannot give $10 or more dollars now, you can help the museum and these worthy projects by spreading the word.

ihfa

Debra Bolaños (left), a ballet folklórico dancer and instructor in East Chicago, Indiana, and Harold Klosterkemper (right), a fiddle player from Decatur County, Indiana, will soon be honored for their lifetime achievement as Indiana traditional artists. They will be recognized as Indiana Heritage Fellows in a special ceremony on April 27, 2019. Learn more about the event here.

 

 

Aug 31

Really Really Getting Up to Speed for Tomorrow, Fall

This week the Mathers Museum of World Cultures has been part of a larger Indiana University effort to get the word out about an interlocking set of events and initiatives. As readers here will have noted, these include the campus’ first First Thursday Festival (happening tomorrow), the Siyazama exhibition opening at MMWC (happening tomorrow after the First Thursday Festival concludes), and the College of Arts + Sciences’ Themester, which focuses on Beauty and includes a raft of MMWC activities–both tomorrow and throughout the semester. Here I want to post one last time before our big day tomorrow. My purposes are two. To lay out specifically what MMWC activities are happening and to provide a round up of the various communications and news stories that have appeared in connection with these events. Getting the word out is normal, but when some events are new (as First Thursdays is) it pays to really get it out. Here is a round up of coverage and a chance to get the whole picture, so as to not miss out.

First the MMWC part:

Tomorrow at the museum we host four visiting artists for demonstrations (10:30 to 11:30) and a narrative stage hosted by Jon Kay (11:45-12:30). [This will be the first use of our brand new stage!) Here is how we explained this part:

The Beauty of Indiana Folk Arts: Visiting Folk Artists Series–Viki Graber (Basketmaking), John Bundy (Decoy Carving), John Bennett (Blacksmithing), and Greg Adams (Willow Furniture)

Thursday, September 1; 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. (Demonstrations), 11:45 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. (Narrative Stage)

Drop by and meet some of Indiana’s master folk artists while they make and create–Viki Graber (Basketmaking), John Bundy (Decoy Carving), John Bennett (Blacksmithing), and Greg Adams (Willow Furniture) will share their work and their art with you. The demonstrations and narrative stage will be free and open to the public, and are sponsored by Themester 2016: Beauty, an initiative of the IU College of Arts and Sciences.

Our artists guests have a break before they join the museum at First Thursdays for outdoor demonstrations and narrative stage presentations in the Culture Tent adjacent to Woodburn Hall. The Bicentennial Exhibition will be on display outdoors, providing engaging context.  Here is how we explained this:

First Thursdays–Indiana Folk Arts: 200 Years of Tradition and Innovation
Thursday, September 1, 5 to 7:30 p.m.

For more than 200 years Indiana has been home to a wide variety of folk arts. In celebration of the state’s Bicentennial, a special traveling exhibit has been developed by Traditional Arts Indiana, a program at IU’s Mathers Museum of World Cultures, with accompanying demonstrations by Indiana folk artists. Drop by and meet some of Indiana’s master folk artists while they make and create–Viki Graber (Basketmaking), John Bundy (Decoy Carving), John Bennett (Blacksmithing), and Greg Adams (Willow Furniture) will share their work and their art with you. Their presentations will be free and open to the public, and are sponsored by Themester 2016: Beauty, an initiative of the IU College of Arts and Sciences.

As First Thursdays concludes, we will open the Siyazama exhibition (as well as our two other Themester exhibitions–Costume: Beauty, Meaning, and Identity in Dress and Hózhó: Navajo Beauty, Navajo Weavings. Here is our overview of the opening event.

Mathers After Hours–Siyazama: Traditional Arts, Education, and AIDS in South Africa
Thursday, September 1; 7 to 9 p.m.

Join us for the opening of a special traveling exhibition–Siyazama: Traditional Arts, Education, and AIDS in South Africa–that explores how traditional arts, knowledge, and skills are used to address AIDS. The exhibition also showcases the Siyazama (Zulu for “we are trying”) Project, an arts education project based in KwaZulu-Natal, which uses traditional crafts to raise awareness about AIDS. The exhibition grew out of the South African National Cultural Heritage Project, a bi-national project led, in part, by Michigan State University Museum and MATRIX: Center for Humane Arts, Letters, and Social Sciences Online. The exhibition opening will be free and open to the public, and is sponsored by Themester 2016: Beauty, an initiative of the IU College of Arts and Sciences, and the IU School of Public Health-Bloomington.

I note that we also have a great performance and great food lined up for the opening! (see Figure 1 for a piece from Siyazama)

We hope to see you at all or some of this tomorrow. Now for the published stories and releases.

Sanya Ali wrote a nice piece for the Indiana Daily Student (“Mathers plans variety of programming for beginning of September“)

T. J. Jaeger wrote a nice article about First Thursdays, including its Mathers angles, for the Limestone Post. (“IU to Showcase Artists with Massive Monthly Festival“)

On the Art at IU blog, Karen Land posted a nice account of First Thursdays, including its Mathers parts, (“New First Thursdays festival puts the focus on IU’s arts and humanities, food and fun“)

In a message to IU students, staff, and faculty, Provost Lauren Robel invited the campus community to First Thursdays, including the Siyazama opening and other associated events. (“Inaugural First Thursdays Festival“)

First Thursday’s lead organizer, Ed Comentale, Associate Vice Provost for Arts and Humanities, authored a overview of First Thursdays for Inside IU Bloomington. (“First Thursdays Festival will showcase creativity on campus“)

There is a pay-walled story about First Thursdays in the Bloomington Herald-Times by Michael Reschke. Check it out if you have a subscription, just don’t feed the trolls. (“IU ‘First Thursday’ showcases art and humanities“).

In addition, there are press releases for Siyazama and Themester.

Hopefully that is enough information for everyone to really know what the deal is. I look forward to seeing you at our artists events, at First Thursdays, at the MMWC exhibition opening, and at all the great programs lined up for fall. Thanks to all who have worked to bring these events to fruition.

ga9umoxofl_actual
Figure 1: “Let’s Work Together to Fight AIDS” cloth by Johanna Sebaya, Mapula embroidery project, Winterveldt, North West Province, South Africa, 2005. | Photo by Pearl Yee Wong, courtesy of the Michigan State University Museum

Aug 30

Get Oriented to Themester 2016: Beauty

Reviewing the Mathers Museum of World Cultures events and exhibitions pages is probably the only way to get a full sense of all that we are doing for 2016 Themester, but for an overview of Themester as a whole and its focus on Beauty, I recommend checking out yesterday’s kickoff press release (Figure 1). In addition to the MMWC pages, it would also be great to see the Themester website. For MMWC, Themester boils down to three great classes [A400, E460, F360] taught at the museum, three great beauty-focused exhibitions [Costume, Hózhó, Siyazama], plus a lot of programming, including folk artists residencies throughout the semester, as well as films, lectures, and hands-on activities. Check out the full list here. Thanks go to the College of Arts and Sciences for including the museum in an impressive roster of Themester activities. Thanks too go to the students who are helping us organize our Themester activities and to the artists and tradition bearers whose work we are highlighting. Please join it this remarkable exploration of beauty around the world.

Themester.jpg
Figure 1: The Themester 2016 press release, which leads off with a photography b MMWC Consulting Curator Pravina Shukla, from her exhibition Costume.

Aug 28

Material Vernaculars: Institutional Role, Review, Authors, and Genres

The new Material Vernaculars series is co-published by the Mathers Museum of World Cultures with a huge amount of heavy lifting from our partner, the Indiana University Press. The first two volumes in the series are Folk Art and Aging by Jon Kay and the eponymous edited volume Material Vernaculars: Objects, Images, and Their Social Worlds. Jon Kay is the author of the first of these and I am the editor of the second. Jon and I are both on the IU faculty (in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology) and in the MMWC, where Jon is Director of Traditional Arts Indiana and Curator of Folklife and Cultural Heritage and I am the museum’s director. As the new series becomes known, it is reasonable to ask—is it just a publishing venue for the museum and its associates and partners?

MW Website

The answer here is no, but as you might guess, the series is intended to be the go to place when the museum does have its own publishing projects. This answer prompts then a couple of more points needing to be made. Peer-review for the series is fully managed by the IU Press and editorial review is a joint matter, thus it is quite conceivable that a museum project might be passed on by the press either at the early editorial review stage or at the peer-review stage. (I note that the press has already passed on one possible project, to illustrate this point tangibly.) Thus the series will hopefully be the home for additional MMWC authors and projects, but this is not guaranteed—and should not be.

The other side of this is that the series will hopefully come to publish authors without ties to museum, including colleagues not yet known to me. As the series homepage presently notes, “Potential authors interested in the Material Vernaculars series should contact the series editor Jason Baird Jackson via mvseries [at] indiana.edu and Aquisitions Editor Janice Frisch at frischj [at] indiana.edu.” That phrase, and the series overview, are available here.

As noted there, a new series also poses genre questions. Here, my intentions as editor are broad. “The series accommodates a diversity of types of work, including catalogues and collections studies, monographs, edited volumes, and multimedia works.” To me, these are the key genres of relevance for research museum practice in ethnography, ethnology, and cultural history (our museum’s fields), but it could be that new, as yet not fully recognized genres could also find a home in the series. While the forthcoming edited volume is something of a sampler, future edited volumes will likely have a strong thematic focus. Stand alone essays will continue to find a home in the museum’s journal, Museum Anthropology Review.

I hope to hear from potential authors and editors interested in learning more about the series. Thanks to all who have supported this new effort.

 

Aug 27

Plethora of Patrons and Programs Prompts Parking Progress

(Sorry about that headline. I could not control myself.) This fall there will be an extraordinary number of programs at the Mathers Museum of World Cultures. We hope to see you here for many of them. The wave begins in the week ahead. Before we get there, I want to reach out especially to Bloomington and Indiana friends who do not work at Indiana University and who sometimes find visiting the museum difficult for lack of close-to-the-museum parking. This is especially a concern for those with mobility issues. The museum has consistently advocated for increased near-museum visitor parking and I am happy to note that–with quite engaged support from the relevant university offices–we have recently made some solid progress forward.

IMG_2186

Until recently, the museum and the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology shared five visitors spaces on the west side of the lab and museum, on the circular drive that is entered northbound on Indiana Avenue (and that one exits westbound on 9th Street). There were five IU staff spaces also located on this drive. Those staff spaces have been moved a bit north to the McCalla School lot (between 9th and 10th, off Indiana) and converted to five more Museum/Lab visitor spaces. In addition to doubling the near-museum parking, happily all of the metered visitor spaces at the McCalla School lot remain in service.

The number of events that we are hosting–especially since the move of Traditional Arts Indiana–to the museum and the increased numbers of people who are joining us (or who express a desire to join us, if they could just park more easily)–is a key factor in the addition of these spaces, but I note quickly here that work is underway to make the museum building more accessible and that the increased parking is part of a larger effort in that realm. More on that asap.

Of course, we would love for you to walk, bus, bike, skateboard, etc. to the museum. That is great for the earth and great for you and for the museum too. When you take a scooter to the museum instead of driving, you are freeing up one of those spaces for a person who can only get here by car. Even if they do not know to appreciate your effort, I appreciate it on their behalf. Carpooling helps too for the same reason. And if you are an IU person with an IU parking pass, you can help as well by parking in staff spaces around the museum rather than taking one of the visitor spots.

We are going to continue working to make the museum easier to visit. You can help us by spreading the word. It is sad when people say to me that they have never come to the museum because they just don’t want to fool with the parking issues. If you know someone who says such things, tell them the good news and encourage them to make their first visit. We’ll be glad to see them–and you.

Aug 24

Material Vernaculars Series Launches with Jon Kay’s Folk Art and Aging

This fall I will be talking a lot about the new book series that the Indiana University Press and the Mathers Museum of World Cultures are jointly publishing. I am the series’ editor and my friend and colleague Jon Kay is its first author. I will frame the series here, before I conclude this post, but I do not want to bury the lead, which is that there is a great new book in the world and you should buy and learn from it.

Jon Kay is Director of Traditional Arts Indiana, Curator of Folklife and Cultural Heritage at the Mathers Museum of World Cultures, and Professor of Practice in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, Indiana University. His book is Folk Art and Aging: Life-Story Objects and Their Makers. (Jon’s content rich book website is here.) It is the fruit of many years of work exploring the creative lives of older adults in Indiana and in other parts of the United States. Jon has much to say about the ways that material culture and narrative come together in social encounters and in unfolding lives, as well as about about the ways that more attentive scholarship on the verbal and material life, as well as the memory, work, of elders can shape more humane and sensible approaches to what is increasingly referred to as creative aging, as well as to social gerontology more generally. The book is a folklorist’s book, but it also speaks very generatively to a range of neighboring disciplines. Written in a very clear and engaging style, it is the kind of book that lots of people (not just scholars) can read and both enjoy and learn from. At its center are profiles of five incredibly interesting creators of objects, stories, and lives. Jon helps share their stories and their creations in a really engaging way. The book has many beautiful color images and at 133 pages, it never gets bogged down.

9780253022165_lrg

The hardback, paperback, and ebook editions are beautiful and they can be purchased from the Indiana University Press, from Amazon, from Google, and from many other retailers. I’ll tell you next time where to get the free PDF edition, but here I want to urge everyone who can to purchase one of the paper or ebook editions. Why? Paradoxically, because I believe in open access. If those who can do so purchase the modestly priced print or e-book editions, the IU Press will secure the revenue that it needs to produce more books such as Folk Art and Aging and to make them freely available to those who otherwise could not afford to purchase them. More on such questions next time.

Having introduced Folk Art and Aging to you, let me introduce the series quickly. The series précis reads:

The Material Vernaculars series presents ethnographic, historical, and comparative accounts of material and visual culture manifest in both the everyday and extraordinary lives of individuals and communities, nations and networks. While advancing a venerable scholarly tradition focused on the makers and users of hand-made objects, the series also addresses contemporary practices of mediation, refashioning, recycling, assemblage, and collecting in global and local contexts. Indiana University Press publishes the Material Vernaculars series in partnership with the Mathers Museum of World Cultures at Indiana University. The series accommodates a diversity of types of work, including catalogues and collections studies, monographs, edited volumes, and multimedia works. The series will pursue innovative publishing strategies intended to maximize access to published titles and will advance works that take fullest advantage of the affordances provided by digital technologies.

The series second title is an eponymous edited volume—Material Vernaculars: Objects, Images, and Their Social Worlds. That collection is due out in a few days (September 5, 2016). In its introduction, I characterize in more detail the goals of the series as well as situate its disciplinary (cultural anthropology, folklore studies, ethnology, culture history) engagements as well as its place in the larger research work of the MMWC. I look forward to sharing it with you.

Congratulations to Jon Kay on his second book of the summer (see Indiana Folk Art) and to all of our friends at the Indiana University Press.

Jul 17

An Interview with Hannah Davis, Regional Folklife Survey and Program Development Consultant for the New York Folklore Society and the New York State Council on the Arts

Hannah Davis earned her MA in Folk Studies from Western Kentucky University and a BA in Folklore and Ethnomusicology from Indiana University. While at Indiana, she served for four years as a Program Coordinator with Traditional Arts Indiana, Indiana’s statewide folk and traditional arts agency—now a constituent program of the Mathers Museum of World Cultures. Throughout her MA training at WKU, she worked as a Graduate Assistant for the Kentucky Folklife Program. In June 2016, she began work in a public folklore position based within the New York Folklore Society with funding from the New York State Council on the Arts. While a student, she gained additional internship experience working with the Smithsonian Institution’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage and the American Folklore Society.

Jason Jackson (JJ): Hannah—I am so happy to be doing this interview with you, especially just as you are getting settled into your new role as a public folklorist in upstate New York. Could you describe your new position?

Hannah Davis (HD): Since June 1, I’ve been working as a contractor for the New York Folklore Society and New York State Council on the Arts. I’ve been tasked with doing a folklife survey of nine counties (six in the Finger Lakes and three in the southwestern corner of the state). I’m also responsible for coordinating a few public programs with smaller regional arts organizations and acting as a consultant in the planning of future folklife-based programming. The state of New York is unique in that it has an organized network of folklorists working in many different capacities. This position was created as a way to serve counties that are not otherwise served by folklorists.

JJ: For those who are reading about such work for the first time, what goes into doing a multi-county folklife survey? How will your findings translate into further research and eventually presentations, publications,  or other outcomes?

HD:  Surveys involve, in many ways, all the fun parts of working as a folklorist. Between now and the end of my contract, I will have conducted dozens of interviews with all kinds of artists, musicians, and other informants, and crisscrossed the state documenting fairs and festivals. I’ll record, photograph, and film as much as possible.

Especially when a survey includes so many unique communities, it’s important to stay organized and keep your eyes on the big picture. There’s only one of me, and so many hours in a day. This is not intended to be a comprehensive survey of all the traditional arts and culture that one may find in each of my nine counties. Rather, my goal is to be able to paint a picture for our partner organizations of the kinds of traditions that exist in their service areas, and the ways in which they may continue to do folklife programming in the future.

It’s important to me to respond directly to the needs of these organizations. The Auburn Public Theater, for example, is interested in doing a narrative stage, during which informants will engage in a conversation with each other about a specific topic, and their audience will be able to interact and ask questions. As I’m conducting fieldwork in their service area, then, I will make note of informants who seem to particularly enjoy discussing their life and work. Towards the end of my contract, I’ll work on organizing photos and recordings, transferring files to others, and drafting my programming recommendations. It’s possible that parts of this project will turn into more long-term work for NYFS. I’ll also publish a few articles discussing my work in NYFS’s journal, Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore.

JJ: It does sound like it will be a lot of fun. You know you will meet great people but you do not yet know who they all are or what they are passionate about. How did your work in Indiana and Kentucky prepare you for your new work in New York state?

HD: Exactly! A big part of my job at TAI [Traditional Arts Indiana] was transcribing, logging, and organizing materials collected by fieldworkers. I’m grateful to Jon Kay, the organization’s director, for introducing me to basic ethnographic methods through this kind of work, and allowing me to participate (even as a college freshman!) in collaborative projects like the one I’m tackling now. Certainly, entering my grad program already comfortable with convening meetings, drafting grant applications, and planning public programs allowed me to work more independently at the Kentucky Folklife Program. My time in Indiana and Kentucky really equipped me to take a “big picture” approach to my work here in New York—I didn’t just learn how to do fieldwork, I learned what to do with fieldwork.

JJ: That is good. As we continue working with students in TAI and at the museum as a whole, your experience will be a source of encouragement. On the flip side, what kinds of experiences do you wish you could have had while at IU and WKU? What are you surprised by as you get going in New York?

HD: I certainly wish I had been able to take some [undergraduate] public folklore classes to complement my work at TAI. I didn’t really understand the origins of the field I was working in until I began graduate-level classes at Western. Once I got to Western, though, I really missed being able to take advantage of the diverse programs offered at IU. Pursuing my interests in digital media, for example, became a lot more difficult. There’s only so much you can study and prepare for, though! There’s a lot to be said for just diving in.

This might be a silly answer, but honestly, I’ve been most surprised by how smoothly things have gone. I don’t mean this to be self-congratulatory at all—the people here have just been so kind, and so happy to share their work with me. When you’re learning how to do fieldwork, you hear a lot of horror stories. I don’t have any yet!

JJ: Building up undergraduate course opportunities for public and applied folklore work is on the agenda at IU, as are opportunities for public humanities involvements more generally. Your reflection contributes to the making of the case for such efforts. I am glad that you have no horror stories and I hope that things continue in that vein.

HD: That’s great to hear.

vikingship
Hannah photographs a recreation of a Viking ship at the Scandinavian Folk Festival in Jamestown, NY.

JJ: What are you learning about public folklore infrastructure in New York state? Things seem really strong there and this seems to be a longstanding pattern

HD: The infrastructure here is part of the reason I was so excited to take the job. There are capable and accomplished folklorists, including a few IU students and grads, working across the state. Many are within arts organizations, some work more independently, but they are all part of a collaborative network loosely bound together by Ellen McHale at NYFS and Robert Baron at NYSCA, who both work hard to support what we do (financially and otherwise). Their leadership has been crucial to the longstanding pattern you’ve noticed.

JJ: What is one cool cultural discovery that you have already made as you begin to learn your way around your part of the state?

HD: Word on the street is that there’s a game called “roque” played in the western part of the state. I hadn’t heard of it until a few days ago! An annual tournament is held in Angelica, a village in Allegany County, during the community’s Heritage Day celebration. It resembles croquet, but has entirely different rules. Readers might be interested in this 2010 ESPN article.

JJ: I knew you’d have something great to share and just like that you serve up roque. Hopefully we’ll all be playing it soon, or at least watching your documentary!

Here’s two to go out on. If you could share a word of counsel with an IU sophomore with an interest in a humanities career, what would you say? As an alumna, what would you share in conversation with our Provost or President about your training at IU.

It’s scary to think about how recently I was an IU sophomore. Feels like it’s been ages! Here’s what I’d say: “It will be okay. There are jobs.” Sincere commitment to an interest goes a long way at IU, especially in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology. I knew as a freshman that I wanted to graduate as a folklore major, and it was entirely because of a pep talk from a grad student who saw some potential in me and sent me to talk to Jon [Kay]. With the guidance of wonderful professors like you, Jason, and some very honest graduate students, I became a success story. And there are so many others. I’m proud to be an IU alumna, and to be part of the community that the department has fostered. A degree in the humanities is not a death wish.

To the provost and president, I’d say this: “My training at IU made me the professional that I am today.” I’ve been thinking a lot about my time at IU since yesterday’s announcement about the department’s move to the Classroom Office Building. I met some of my nearest and dearest friends and mentors in the TAI office. Our buildings were run-down. They were not accessible to members of the community with different physical capabilities. That’s a terrible thing. But they were home, and I’m sad that I won’t be able to go back there. The department is a whole lot more than a cluster of neglected brick buildings, though. It’s an incubator, it’s a community, and it’s a wonderful thing to be a part of. I couldn’t have learned the things I learned there anywhere else.*

JJ: Thank you Hannah for sharing your experiences with me and with our readers. Keep us posted on your adventures and come back soon and teach your Bloomington friends how to play roque!

*In her closing remarks, Hannah is referring to the offices of the IU Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology from which she earned her BA and in which I serve as a Professor. The department’s offices and seminar rooms in a cluster of four historic brick houses located adjacent to one another on N. Fess Ave. and N. Park Ave in Bloomington have, for alumni, staff, and faculty, become icons of the department over the course of many decades. In July 2016 it was announced that the Department would be moved to new more modern and accessible quarters in a university building known as the Classroom Office Building on 3rd Street, across from the campus’ historic “Old Crescent” area. The department looks forward to showing off its new home to returning alumni very soon. (JJ)

Jun 28

Open Access Book: Indiana Folk Arts

IFA CoverThis year is a big year for the Mathers Museum of World Cultures in a number of respects. Two of these weave together. Its the state bicentennial for Indiana and we are engaging with it in a big way through the exhibition Indiana Folk Arts: 200 Years of Tradition and Innovation. That exhibition is now traveling across Indiana along with with a deep roster of presenting artists and craftspeople. The exhibition and associated in-person demonstrations are happening at state parks and festivals around Indiana and the exhibition will also be presented at the Indiana State Fair, later this summer. The exhibition brings together more than a decade of research by Traditional Arts Indiana and was also an project worked on by the Laboratory in Public Folklore graduate course taught in the IU College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology. Working with TAI Director and MMWC Curator of Folklife and Cultural Heritage Jon Kay, a large number of students have been involved in all aspects of the exhibition and associated programs, products, and events.

2016 is also slated to be a big year for book publishing at MMWC. We have a number of books in the cue for fall. The first to become available is the catalogue for Indiana Folk Arts. Edited by Jon Kay with chapters authored by a large and talented group of graduate students, the volume enriches the exhibition while also standing alone as a contribution to scholarship on Indiana craft and art. At exhibition events and here at the MMWC, the book is being distributed for free in a beautiful full-color print edition. In keeping with our institutional commitment to increased and open access to scholarship, the volume is also available electronically and permanently via the IUScholarWorks Respository. Licensed under a CC-BY license, it can be found online here: https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/handle/2022/20893. Its the first MMWC publication for which we obtained an ISBN number (two actually, one for the print edition and one for the PDF edition), which is also pretty neat.IFA Front Page

Congratulations to Jon Kay, the volume’s editor, to all of its contributors, and to the talented artists, craftspeople, and tradition bearers featured in the book. Welcome readers–72 beautiful pages await you, wherever in the world you live. If you like the book and support the work behind it, spread it widely. Tell your friends and colleagues so that they can enjoy it too.

Jul 31

Recording of the Creative Commons Webinar Now Online

I should have noted it previously, but the excellent folks at Traditional Arts Indiana have gotten the recording of my early summer webinar on the Creative Commons up online. If you missed it and are just dying to check it out, the details (and a link to the recording) can be found on the TAI website here. Thanks to TAI for organizing this event. I am glad that the more recent TAI Webinars that have been successful. Details on all this activity can be found on the TAI webpage at http://www.traditionalartsindiana.org.

See my earlier post on this event here.

Sep 7

3 Comments

Museum Anthropology 32(2) and IU Folklore and Ethnomusicology

This past summer, my editorship of Museum Anthropology slowly wound to a stop. I saw tonight that the final issue of my term has now been posted online (behind a toll wall) in Wiley InterScience. It should thus appear in AnthroSource very soon and then it will show up in mailboxes. One of the consistent pleasures of the editorship has been publishing the work of smart and talented colleagues with whom I work here at Indiana University. The final issue 32(2) contains reviews or review essays by several of these friends.

Arle Lommel provided a review essay titled “From Galleries and Catalogues to Websites: Three Online Musical Instrument Exhibitions” (pp. 111-113).

Gabrielle A. Berliner authored two reviews for the issue.  One of the digital exhibition “Keeping the Faith: Judaica from the Aron Museum” (pp. 117-118) and one is of the book Jews and Shoes edited by Edna Nahshon (pp. 152-154).

Teri Klassen reviewed the book Texas Quilts and Quilters: A Lone Star Legacy by Marcia Kaylakie with Janice Whittington (pp. 134-135), while a second quilt book–Contemporary Quilt Art: An Introduction and Guide by Kate Lenkowsky (pp. 160-161) was reviewed by Janice E. Frisch.

Michael Dylan Foster’s contribution to the issue is a review of How to Wrap Five Eggs: Traditional Japanese Packaging by Hideyuki Oka and Michikazu Sakai (pp. 154-155).

An alumnus of our department, Katherine Roberts (now on the faculty of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill) reviewed the book Sacred and Profane: Voice and Vision in Southern Self-Taught Art edited by Carol Crown and Charles Russell (pp. 122-124).

Finally, a DVD produced by our colleague Jon Kay (who is the director of Traditional Arts Indiana) was reviewed by Chris Goertzen of the University of Southern Mississippi. The film is Crafting Sound: Indiana Instrument Builders and it appear on page 119-120 in the new issue.

Thanks to everyone in (and of) the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology who worked so hard to help Museum Anthropology thrive over the past several years.

« Older Entries
%d bloggers like this: