The American Folklife Center (AFC) is proud to announce a new research guide, which highlights AFC collections related to the National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. The National Heritage Fellowship is the highest honor for the traditional arts in the United States. Since 1982, the award has recognized lifetime achievement among traditional artists and advocates for the traditional arts. On Friday, September 29, 2023, the American Folklife Center will be hosting a public ceremony to honor the 2023 recipients of the National Heritage Fellowship. Awardees of the 2020, 2021, and 2022 National Heritage Fellowship will also be celebrated, as the COVID-19 pandemic inhibited their in-person recognition. Find about about the new guide and the ceremony in this blog post!
Although the Library of Congress is temporarily closed to the public and staff are, as possible, working from home, the work of the Library continues. It is heartening to see that one of the most labor intensive areas of work, putting archival collections online, continues in spite of the precautions against the COVID-19 pandemic. The …
This is a guest post by reference librarian Todd Harvey, who curates the Lomax family papers at the American Folklife Center. Today, the American Folklife Center announces the launch of the Bess Lomax Hawes (1921-2009) digital collection, now available at this link. A scholar, teacher, performer, writer, and filmmaker, Bess established and stewarded the Folk …
Our journey in the Folklife at the International Level series last took us to long-established East Asian “Living Human Treasures” programs for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage (ICH). As discussed, during the 1990s, UNESCO recommended to Member States that they adopt similar systems of subsidizing (or, at the least, officially recognizing) people in their own territories …
The following is a guest post from Todd Harvey, the curator of the Alan Lomax Collection at the American Folklife Center archives, Library of Congress. The American Folklife Center is delighted to announce donation of the Bess Lomax Hawes Collection (AFC 2014/008) to the Center’s archive. The collection contains manuscripts, sound recordings, photographs, and moving …
