The more you understand that your time is a Continuum of things that have gone before. I find it reassuring if anyone has followed the long course of debate over the folk art definition. It's Lewis Jones director emeritus of the New York State Historical Museum now 72, dr. Jones has spent much of his life exploring folk art and folklore. He's considered an eloquent folk art scholar and the grand old man of his field. He's witnessed the development of folk art from the bastard cousin of the Fine Arts to illegitimate and increasingly popular sector of the Arts and Humanities wouldn't accept it as being sufficiently aesthetically interesting, you know still is very little American are taught in the universities that I'm shocked at how often people get a degree in it in our history in this country without ever Having learned anything about American art, which is has it now a very respectable history. I did no longer has to apologize to anybody when somebody is conservator. As Hilton Kramer from The New York Times will spend his long Sunday column on the folk art show. We have arrived Lewis Jones arrived at his interest in folk art as a young student with a surprisingly Fine Arts orientation. His Doctorate was in what he terms High tone literature but Jones admits. He always seemed to have dirt under his fingernails come from very simple people. My people were firing people down to my father's generation that had been since they got here and I supposed long before that I have no pretensions really do upper class culture so that I have never been attracted to Well in the history field, for example, Williamsburg leaves me cold, then start Restorations of great houses and Williamsburg. Of course, it's the great example of that where the emphasis on the lives of the upper class. I can approach these problems intellectually, but not emotionally. I have always been more interested in how My great-great-grandfather would have lived or did live on a farm in Upstate New York. I'm interested to know. how the blacksmith operated of not only in terms of the techniques of the of the Anvil and and the hammer but in terms of his relationship to the community when I went into the museum business back in the late 1940s, the whole emphasis was on upper class life Define the Fine Things of the well-to-do family should save we're coming into the Museum's rapidly and that was fine. That's all right. But that had nothing to do with me and I knew it didn't have anything really to do with a great many people the great majority of people most of us. and so much of my career has been spent concerned with the literature that is two stories to Tales the songs that people sang before they could read the tired of Little Big lies. They told the Tall Tales the joke state-owned the things that interested them like the murders of the things that scared them like a beliefs and Witchcraft and ghosts and the things that worried them and in a sense also titillated the switch from the folklore of ghost Tales to folk art was prompted primarily by his appointment as director of the New York State Historical associations outdoor Farmers Museum. It was a move for which Jones says he wasn't completely prepared man. Who was the angel for the museum? Stephen C Clark with a great art collector and a man of superb taste. Call me when Danny said could you come down New York and go and visit the house of the Widow Ely? Nottelmann the great polish Sculptor? He had made a major collection of folk art, which she had sold to the New York Historical Society in New York City. But you took the money you got from it and start right in making another collection. So climb is Clark and I went up there and we spent a day or part of an afternoon looking over this house full of wonderful things. Finally Junior Society said if you could have 12 of these pieces what 12 would you choose? Why was pretty in experience I was totally inexperienced, but you're always a challenge. And I thought about a minute then finally named 12 pieces and he kind of scold a little and said well, I agree with you on 11 of them. Let's by 13. So he brought 13 pieces and some very great pieces. They were they have stood up. Well as I've lived with him now one way or another for nearly 30 years. Well, I remember some of them very well one is a wonderful figure of a of a dancing black man. That was a probably a Tavern sign. A part of its charm lies in the fact that the pain is all gone and the the convolutions of the grain of the wood give it an unusual. projecting unusual pleasure There was a great round political Banner from the campaign of Henry Clay and what would have been 38? There were there was a superb a Star of Bethlehem quilt probably a Pennsylvania. Peace, and then a coverlet large double bed coverlet with a tree of life in blue and white. Well back in 1972 3 my wife and I had a grant from the National Endowment of humanities to go anywhere in the country. We wanted and Sample to see what you could find and we found them all kinds of places. We found them in small museums Pick 3 in historical societies and County Historical Society. We found them in the houses of collectors. We found them in flea markets. We found them in antique shows and antique shops. Someone who just found them on the road in the sense that I remember a garage somewhere in Georgia where it was a wonderful painting all across the front of it. We found wonderful pieces of of carving and graveyards the you know, the gravestone Cutters were our first sculptors in this country. Really they were working in stone as far back as the age 17th century. Well, I think the first thing you have to have. And I guess from my point of view if it doesn't have some aesthetic value some aesthetic interest. Forget it now that this is one of the places where the moldy figs in the end the pink flamingo is that different Pink Flamingos represent the two philosophical camps currently in the field in the 1960s a split developed the moldy figs who were longtime students of folk art tended to put heavy emphasis on aesthetic judgment and used only General criteria to define legitimate artworks. The pink flamingo is largely composed of folklorist seemed more interested in specific criteria such as how and by whom the object was made to lay people the distinction may seem negligible for the differences continue to spark great professional controversy. In fact, the conference was devoted to bringing the two camps together for Jones who has been on both sides throughout his career the split now appears unnecessary made. Was the irrelevant and I liked it for myself but keep in mind which is which but it seems to me the principal objective is to enjoy these things. That's why we pray they should be collected by Museum should have them why people should should collect just because they're fun morning session of the conference though that nagging question of defining an art form persisted. The guest speakers urged academics and Museum directors alike to expand their Concepts and the most compelling argument came from Rodger Welsh associate professor of English and anthropology at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln the problems that we often have in determining the nature of our knowledge of some material like folk art is it again not the problem of the area full card, but are narrow understanding of what knowledge is When I went to the Omaha Indians, I work with the Omaha tribe for about 12 years and among the many things. I learned to I remember one particular sequence with made me read assess my understanding of what knowledge is the Omaha culture is a deductive culture. It's not inducted when does not ask questions. When is not told thing you are simply to learn by observation. One of the biggest joke they have is to get somebody to Dollars to take dance lessons, which is considered hilarious cuz that's not the way you learn how to dance by having somebody tell you you learn to dance by watching other people dancing and doing it. I was called One Summer by a friend of mine Clyde Sheridan and he said he did not ask. He said we would like to have you be the head dancer for a gourd dance on September 16th. I was typical not to ask if one doesn't do that one simple says things and then the other person approved or disapproved and I was extremely honored by this very happy to be the head dancer after I realized I've been told September 16th. The time of the dance or the location but I assume that sometime in the intervening month-and-a-half. I'd find out by hearing it around but came to the Saturday before the Sunday and watch this dance was to be I still didn't know the time or the place for the dance, which is also fairly typical for them. But for me was a heroin sort of experience. I was supposed to be one of the principal figures in the savannah. I still didn't know where I was supposed to go in at what time I was supposed to be there. But Clyde Sheridan's brother Frank deals a lot with naan Indian peoples and so he was a good answer pologist he knew how to deal with that snore anxieties. So I went to him Saturday and I said Frank, I don't know where this dance is supposed to be. I don't even know when it is. Do you know and he said no, I haven't heard yet. But tomorrow morning. I'm having breakfast over at Clyde's house. Why don't you come by at noon? And I'll tell you soon on the Sunday that I was to be involved in this ritual. I went to Frank Sheridan's house and waited anxiously. Randy came back and I said have you found out what time is it in? Where is it? He said I was over there all morning and nobody said and he was not going to ask either. So what I what I had to do this afternoon with the shift into Indian gear and decide to try to function as they would in the same situation, which was to learn deductively where this whole thing was going to take place. So I got in my car about 1 after I talked to Frank. I started driving around to those places where one could expect this dance to be and I drove out to Pioneer Park with a park outside of town and just as I went in the gate out came the carload of Indian friends of mine and they all honked and waved and I'm not out here. So I went inside turn around and started back into town. I got two of those ball diamond in town and I ain't where's another play another building there was a off in medications. I saw Klystron car. So I parked beside his car. I spotted him sitting in bleachers watching the baseball game. So I thought if I sit next to Clyde then there's nothing can happen without I will be in the right place at the right time. So I sat with him for the remaining Innings of this baseball game. When was all over he stood up dust it off his pants and looked around and now behind us there were maybe Thirty carloads of Indians standing around who spotted our car and we're waiting. He said he said then well, it looks like everybody's here. So I guess we might as well have the dance here. We might as well have it. Now what struck me about that? What what struck me about that was that typically typical of my culture. I was trying to find the fact there were no fact. I was looking for information for knowledge, which did not exist the time and place for that tent that dance did not exist until the moment the Clyde stood up dust it off his hands and look behind him. So very often I think those of us who look for information are looking for information, which simply does not exist. Well, what is folk what is art once the Europeans can confidently say peasants are the folk and that worked because almost everything peasant was full that the route that that route excluded all 9 peasant folk where did not detract from the initial truth. That peasant was indeed. If not a comprehensive equivalent, as long as the definition was agreed upon it worked like all definitions. But now we're understanding our Convention of folklore has come to include Urban upper class materials to the belief tail and Pollock Joker currently the most evident forms of express it folklore among college students and there they are pervasive evidence that middle-class educated white folks have folklore. The essence of folk art is not in the item, but in the process just as general folklore studies and Theology of move from an item orientation to process we too must come to think of full cart as a product of processes and seek its nature within those processes still in arbitrary and conventional set of decisions is ice cream from manifold pulpits over the past decade those processes give rise to the characteristics. We generally accepted be the nature of full card and an MD group Acceptance in production inevitable variation within a consistent framework and self-conscious performance and poor production and so forth. By spotting such signals we can guess that the material at hand is a product of the folk process that generates such forms. We cannot however say with certainty that full guard is material demonstrating those characteristics for they can be fabricated. Well apart from the processes by imitators and interpreters on the plains this process consists in large part of ethnic The Virgins convergence and diversion that is ethnocentric materials under constant massive assault from within and without from those who carry the banner of ethnic Pride, but are in reality embarrassed by their own Heritage and from the 150% of Americans, who knows the only true Americans are people precisely like them and short a good part of the study of folk art on the plane must concentrate on with full course of denied to be there interest for years survivals. If okinus license with make sure the excuse the expression wise and processes. What of art the first things that come to mind when one thinks of Art in the classical sense of the word or paintings and sculpture and yet there are precious few of those types of things and planes folk art and artists thought I was being decorative somehow perhaps even primarily decorative Willa Cather is a matter of fact remarks and O Pioneers. The Pioneers didn't seem to judge the beauty of something precisely by its uselessness. But then the art of the elitist of the galleries in classrooms is no longer that simple either artist quotes create quote art quote by shaking hands with every garbage collector in New York City or by building a fence over miles of Alpine tundra or Barbarian cars are by planting an I-beam in the middle of a Federal Highway with such objects have been seen as art 300 years ago, probably not but the essence of art is not in the item, but in the process has the canons of Esthetics if painting and sculpture are not the principal forms a full card on the planes. We have at least two possible conditions to consider the slot has been left empty or the same processes have resulted in new perhaps still largely unrecognized phenomena. There are those who argue the former hypothesis, they feel that the hardships of pioneering and a Savage Plains geography left little time and few materials for things Beyond necessity what then of the Plains Indians they had time and materials for art a Carver Inn in the city across from us responded to my comment that he was one of the best Carver's I'd ever seen with a crushing rejoinder. I am only one of the best because I'm one of the last perhaps it isn't there for that the material OurTime have played out but the canons of Aesthetics that produce the art of atrophied. Perhaps full guard to suffering from the general antagonism felt on the plains word art in general has been over the past 60 years a growing antipathy toward the Arts. Usually with some reason Elisa consistently demonstrated their own embarrassment of being ruined on the Plains by insisting on inflicting New York art and artists I Minneapolis Lincoln in Broken Bow that is by insisting to plain candies culture is New York. There aren't confessing that they don't think the planes are its culture is New York a blatantly Preposterous suggestion. The sad look in their eyes tells us further that they realize the plains never will be as cultured as New York because it seems unlikely or and unlikely or that the planes will ever be, New York. Imposition imposition of Arcane even sell deprecated toriart on the plains Countryside Nebraska interstate highway art for example has resulted in a virulent contempt for arts in the hearts of the hics. The pointy-headed intellectuals have responded by hauling in even more bizarre piles of rusting iron declutter the roadsides and parts and so the gap widens between the two constituencies the consequence for us is that the elitist wind up hating full guard because it's full card and the people come to hate folk art because it's full cart. There are dozens of activities on the plane. I would call folk art. I frankly don't see that it matters whether the elitists the producers of art themselves or other folk art Scholars think of those things as Folk Art is David Hufford once said imitating a popular phrase. What is folklore folklores? What a folklorist study I cannot for the life of me. Imagine what you said definition beyond that could be unless you explain something in folklore to folklorists about folklore. I think for example about a current concern of mine marking. It is my contention that a lot of planes attitudes phenomena stem from the antagonism between the land and its current occupants. The relationship Plains Indians had with the environment was a matter of working in harmony with the land of living on a benevolent landscape what they saw as a benevolent landscape of aspiring the combined with a land in life and most assuredly in death. They exalted in being a part of this walk on Tonka am it's holy note, especially Chief Joseph stunning declaration and challenge the Earth and I are of one mind contrast contrast that with the attitudes of the settlers as so magnificently Express bioe rolvaag and Giants in the earth a book that opens its narrative is just south of Minneapolis rolvaag, right quote that night the great Prairie stretched herself voluptuously giant like and full of cunning. She laughed softly into the reddish moon now, we will see what human might me of Bill against us now. We'll see. And monster like the plain lay there sucked in her breath one week in the next week blew it out again, man. She scorned his work. She would not Brooke. She would know when the time came how did guard herself and her own against him? And the chewing title of the last tragic chapter of his meistervik is quote the Great Plain drinks the blood of Christian men and is satisfied. Of course those of us who know the planes know the rules I was wrong about one thing the Great Plain is never satisfied. Are people came out here to conquer the planes to win the West to convert the desert? I suggested that the Nebraska state motto should be the hell. I can't for the principal motivation appears to have been Defiance Nebraska's the tree planter State because trees don't grow there. There is a national forest in Nebraska in which not a single tree has ever sprouted. Naturally the family of old Jewel sandals still insists on growing apple trees in the western hemisphere is largest sand dune area tulips Every Spring weather in Vernon the Desert Wind. In robots book The Hero pair Hansa once a big white house in a Red. Barn is typical of settlers in that respect and my previous studies of planes architecture. I've known did the settlers abandon the eminently suitable side house for frame Construction in large part, not out of any sense of Economics or Comfort but out of a contempt for sod and a desire for one thing to demonstrate wealth through the inefficiency A-frame construction, but they were also marking it's tough to think of yourself as a conqueror of the Great American desert master of all you see when your house is indistinguishable from the pasture. So they did what they could with their houses crops roads windbreaks Park churches School everything to inflict the sign of their presents on the unrelenting landscape. For example, one of the features of the Plains today that strikes many visitors are boots on fence post tens and even scores of posts in a row each with a boot turned upside down over the top why Anyone who works along with folklore learned that it's really sufficient to ask the people who do something why it is they do it. They do it that way because that's the way it's done. That's why they tell me they put boots on fence posts keep away the coyotes to prevent horses from chewing the posts including presumably also the metal post to keep posts from getting wet and rotting the point with to the house with a toe or anybody lost in a blizzard to the cemetery for God knows what reason because Cowboys Souls get it always go to heaven. To indicate that the landowners are Cowboys not Farmers to demonstrate how hard the occupants have worked in this worn-out this mini boots and on and on my own first inclination is to consider how I feel about a good pair of boots thrown away. A pair of Acme's. I've been wearing for 5 years of you like using the writings of Albert Schweitzer for gun wadding. There is afterall some dignity on the fence post, but mine was serious suspicions about the practice goes back to marking wooden posts make a modest enough impression on the plains But Metal post make no Mark at all pickets would have shown up if there'd been good for pickets the barbed wire might just as well not be there at all for all the visual impact it has The boots to show up there striking their obvious. They're beyond necessity. They are there because they suit a social group Canon of Esthetics. Do you they may be ugly to them for whatever reasons? They look just right. Is it full guard? Who knows who cares Define a complex is convoluted in mysterious as Folk Art Is Not only as frustrating sorting loose binder twine. It's also was useless the exercise of defining folgard May in itself be an art that is to say Beyond necessity. Would you Professor Rodger Welsh while Welsh represents the broaden definition approach from an academic perspective Avon lunch speaks of it from the vantage point of Museum Administration. She is the director of the Museum of international folk art in Santa Fe, New Mexico, one of the largest and most respected institutions of its type in the world or advocacy for an open definition May. Well be based on her own. Background born in Trinidad large says she grew up with the drums of Africa in one ear and the drums of India in the other. Her first language is French but launch also speaks English and creole when she first assumed the directorship of the international Museum the staff seemed anxious for her to set a definitional standard for the folk art to be displayed launch turn the tables and ask them to Define it. The result was a highly successful and popular exhibition called what is folk art, as long as observes. It's put everyone back at square one with the final realization that there are no universally applicable definitions. We have to face effect whose aesthetic That's right. And you will it's so common to find the objects with which we are familiar. In short we are culturally conditioned so things with which we are familiar, we will pops more with 10 to find them beautiful because we are familiar with Sam we can read the messages. Are there codes how do we tend to be more? Shy of objects of which we know nothing about for how long is a steak in a long time for Vincent's to have let's see a more broad-minded public accept African skull as being aesthetically beautiful. for how many years Where they considered Idols or really very ugly in the long run Aesthetics is something that is very personal, but we can educate people to see things differently and that's what that's what we're trying to do. That's right another word as it was some things. Maybe they may appear to be Baeza. Because we don't know what they represent if you take something from you know, some tribes of the sea from this from the South Pacific. We can read the iconography. We don't know what the designs mean. And so we treat them as being strange and immediately we are on the defensive but after being exposed to them for quite a long time, we suddenly see that they are amazing designs and maybe the colors and without even trying to understand the symbolism that underlies them we can still look upon them as extraordinary pieces of design of arrangement of cons, you know of a concept some lines. In your Museum. Also, you've done exhibits that try to link folk art from many different places all in one exhibit to show the range of objects. Can you give an example of a yes? I am very interested. In what I call the cross-cultural comparisons. because it shows how ingenious man is. Sometimes this may be reflected in the use of the materials that are at hand I can think straight off the bad for example of an exquisite. Little basket that was made from baleen. Now. What is Belen? Belen is I'm not sure that I'm giving the proper physiological description. But anyway, it is something found in the throats of whales. Let's call it the codes like. No. imagine using that to weave a basket with but even I have taken exhaust an exotic material. But I can also think of Wonder Bread wrappers. I have in my museum a rug that was womb that is moving out of Wonder bread wrapper. I'm just really very attractive but it's made out of good modern plastic. It's interesting. You bring it up. Doesn't that crop cross into the pop art or pop culture back? Yes, possibly. But the thing is that you see that's exactly there are no neat lines that can Define. What is fine arts. What is folk art or what is a craft? Sometimes there is no hesitation lines are clear and others other cases you have gray areas. And so it becomes a personal judgment and what I say Try to refrain from making hard-and-fast decisions which are written in stone. I think we must be willing to adopt some of our Concepts and a c bad friend's son's what is aplastic. What is now today is the use of we making use of plastic. That's a technological change. And I think that we must be we must live within our time and not reject the object simply because it is made out of plastic part, but that is a hole. That was the whole purpose of all exhibit was to get people to think I did not ask them to necessarily adopt my Concepts what I what does crust of the exhibition was to make them question their own preconceptions? Everybody was left of the side where the objects on the Thruway appeasing or not, but it made them think and think they did and I had the evidence because we had people who would spell out of the exhibit area and who would be in violent discussion. Sometimes I would find them in the car park continuing with a discussion. So I don't know if I meet any Converse, but I know that our exhibition exhibition what is full guard stood a lot of common discussion and controversy if you are not prepared to Revise some of your conception of the was long ago everybody felt letter for an object to be in a museum. It had to be old but I think that's nonsense. What about the innovators, you know things are changing all the time and there's not only technology that brings about change but you have also events political events the media for example have had an extraordinary impact on full guard in what? Well, let's take I can think of for example of a Kachina doll in the shape of Mickey Mouse. I can think of some extraordinary Kuna that's the Panamanian Indians who are famous for their embroidery and Cat work who have their own very complicated mythology depicted in their in their embroideries and on the other hand, I can think of several where they have it reproduced friends and the size of an old photograph with the dog and his master's voice or maybe Something depicting. Obviously, what was a political poster Bullwinkle from the funnies is another so that the radio funnies all of these things have had an impact now why why did the kuna Indians adopt those specific? Designs is something that I think is stifle which I have no answer but certainly they found them peezing enough to make a reproduction of them Eve online director of the Museum of international folk art in Santa Fe, New Mexico. There's no doubt that the controversy and debate over the folk art definition will continue as it has continued for ages in the Fine Arts, but such discussion provides fertile ground in which the folk Arts can grow the public stands to gain by such discussion as Morpho card gets exhibited and that's inevitable as Lewis Jones sees it because the time between folk art and the public is growing stronger all the time. I think they give one a sense of continuity with the past a sense of that. You're not out there on a limb all by yourself, but the limb is attached to a tree That much of what we can turn to is been there a long time and survived and and has a kind of heartthrob that goes back a long. I don't mean a heartthrob in the sentimental sense, but it does a human beat to it that that find reassuring I guess dr. Lewis Jones one of the participants in a recent folk Arts conference co-sponsored by the University of Minnesota gallery and the center for the study of Minnesota Folklife. This is Nancy Fusion.