Missouri Folk Arts Program Announces 2024 Living Traditions Sustainer Fellows May 13, 2024 COLUMBIA, MO – The Missouri Folk Arts Program is thrilled to announce the recipients of the 2024 Missouri Living Traditions Sustainer Fellowship, the state’s award to recognize the artistic excellence and lifetime achievement of living traditional artists and community scholars in the Show Me State. The fellowships honor these individuals and their deep-rooted contributions to traditional arts within their vibrant Missouri communities. Three nominees rose to the top of the highly competitive pool ..read more

Thanks for visiting to learn more about Missouri Folk Arts! With the grand re-openings of the Museum of Art & Archaeology and the Museum of Anthropology at Mizzou, Missouri Folk Arts is excited to curate a designated display case. Visitors will find the case just inside the accessible Hitt Street entrance on Ground Level East of Ellis Library. The dynamic photo collage on display in the case represents participants in Missouri Folk Arts projects from the Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program and Missouri Arts Council Folk Arts grantees to Show Me Folk‘s annual regional artist survey, now ..read more

At the link, find a KOMU 8 news story that aired March 10, 2024, as well as a longer narrative version of the story. https://www.komu.com/news/video-hallsville-fiddle-festival-keeps-missouri-traditions-alive/video_a3d8aeef-cf52-50a4-a2a8-9bd5165eb68d.html Thanks to Mizzou’s “Missouri Method” of teaching journalism, we were pleased to participate in an interview by Sophomore Briana Iordan. Briana, Bishop Lamm, and other members of their team were assigned to research Hallsville, Mo. this semester for class. Congratulations to them for telling the story of the Hallsville Dance, and for havin ..read more

Missouri’s Living Traditions Sustainer Fellowship seeks to recognize the excellence and lifetime achievement of living traditional artists and community scholars in the Show Me State. The fellowships will honor those individuals’ deep-rooted contributions to Missouri’s traditional arts and their vibrant communities. Missouri Folk Arts intends for the Living Traditions Sustainer Fellowship nomination process to be accessible to all. Please notify staff well before the deadline for assistance per the Americans with Disabilities Act, language translations, or issues organizing and digitizing nom ..read more

We were sad to hear the news that Fr. Moses Berry of Ash Grove, Mo. died on January 12, 2024. Thanks to an introduction by independent scholar Jami Lewis of Mt. Vernon, we at Missouri Folk Arts and a cohort of community scholars were honored and enlightened upon visiting Fr. Berry in November 2012. The fieldtrip started at The Ozarks Afro-American Heritage Museum, which he founded and curated at 107 West Main Street in downtown Ash Grove. There, Fr. Berry shared stories about his ancestors and objects that belonged to their family or that represented their lives as enslaved, and later free, pe ..read more

Missouri’s Living Traditions Sustainer Fellowship seeks to recognize the excellence and lifetime achievement of living traditional artists and community scholars in the Show Me State. The fellowships will honor those individuals’ deep-rooted contributions to Missouri’s traditional arts and their vibrant communities. Missouri Folk Arts intends for the Living Traditions Sustainer Fellowship nomination process to be accessible to all. Please notify staff well before the deadline for assistance per the Americans with Disabilities Act, language translations, or issues organizing and digitizing nom ..read more

Columbia, Mo., June 8, 2024—Missouri Folk Arts is thrilled to announce the seven teams participating in the 39th annual Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program (TAAP). They are engaged actively in a series of one-on-one lessons and will continue through the spring. Stay tuned to Missouri Folk Arts’ website and social media for 2024 team profiles, progress, and special events. Please help us congratulate the following artists: Mary Barile (Boonville), master rug hooker of Boonville, and apprentice LauraLee Rose (Centralia); Sasha Daucus (Doniphan), master Ozarks herbalist, and apprentice Maris ..read more

Missouri Folk Arts is thankful to individual donors who have provided unrestricted gift funds that support opportunities for staff and traditional artists beyond those designated in grant-funded projects. Previous examples include apprenticeship support; artistic fees; travel; fees for service; and modest equipment upgrades. Instructions for donors are included below:   Give to the Program Online You may make a gift online to the Missouri Folk Arts Program through Giving to Mizzou. From Giving to Mizzou, look under Designations where you can click Explore Uni ..read more

Bev Strohmeyer speaks at a reception hosted by Mid-America Arts Alliance on October 23, 2014 in KCMO in anticipation of her 2015 retirement. Photo by Lisa L. Higgins Saturday, September 2, we woke to the news on Facebook that our friend and colleague Beverly Strohmeyer had suffered and survived a major cardiac event. Over the next two weeks, we followed the stories of her progress, her resilience, her setbacks, and her tenaciousness. Saturday, September 16, we woke to the news on Caring Bridge that Bev had died the previous evening. These last two weeks have been filled with posts on Faceboo ..read more

At the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, we enjoyed meeting Ozarks’ own son Kirk Kramer who resides now in Cottage City, Maryland (originally of Greenfield, Missouri and Miami, Oklahoma). Kirk let us know he wrote the following story for the Greenfield Vedette, now picked up in Springfield’s News-Leader. As the great-grandson of an Arcola quilter (Elizabeth Killingsworth Hargis), Kirk was excited to meet and interview two contemporary Arcola Quilters, who Missouri Folk Arts first met via Kaitlyn McConnell of Ozarks Alive in our Show Me Folk partnership. Arcola quilter Martha Alsup (left standing ..read more