This post is an excerpt of an interview with 2024 American Folklife Center Community Collections Grant recipient Dr. Ashley Minner Jones on her project, Beyond Baltimore Street: Living Lumbee Legacies, as part of the Library of Congress Of the People: Widening the Path initiative.
On June 13th, a new exhibition titled, “Collecting Memories: Treasures from the Library of Congress,” opened to the public in the new David M. Rubenstein Treasures Gallery in the Thomas Jefferson Building. This post highlights items from the collections of the American Folklife Center and the Veterans History Project featured in the exhibition.
In honor of American Wetlands Month, AFC Folklife Specialist Meg Nicholas takes readers on a journey through the swamps, bogs, marshes and bayous documented in several AFC archival collections.
This Folklife Today post is written by Dr. Sarah Fouts, UMBC, who shares the first film in the American Folklife Center Homegrown Foodways Film Series, available for viewing in this post and on the Library of Congress YouTube channel.
A guest blog post by Professor Sarah Fouts, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, on this year’s AFC Homegrown Foodways Film Series: Baltimore and New Orleans, which features two films premiering on the Folklife Today blog: El Camino del Pan a Baltimore on Tuesday November 7th @ noon ET; and El Camino del Mole a New Orleans on Tuesday November 14th @ noon ET.
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!
As the upcoming AFC film and discussion event, Reel Folk: Cultural Explorations on Film, nears, I interviewed filmmaker Amy Nicholson to whet the appetites of fellow ethnographic film enthusiasts out there! Amy’s 2005 film, Muskrat Lovely, will screen on September 30 2017, the second day of the Reel Folk event. View the full schedule here. What …
In April, Maryland Traditions, a program of the Maryland State Arts Council (MSAC), transferred its archives to the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Sustainability of folklore fieldwork collections is a pressing issue for many state folk arts agencies throughout the United States. I recently had the opportunity to talk with state folklorist Clifford Murphy about …