Roots & Routes, Focus Exhibit 2025

Thanks for visiting to learn more about Missouri Folk Arts and the Focus Exhibit!

Missouri Folk Arts is excited to curate a designated display case in our home at the University of Missouri’s Museum of Art & Archaeology in Columbia, Mo.. Visitors will find the case just inside the accessible Hitt Street entrance on Ground Level East at Ellis Library across the street from Memorial Union.

Starting on August 5, 2025, visitors will find a new photo collage that fills the case for Roots & Routes: Missouri’s Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program.

The Show-Me state hosts one of the oldest projects in the United States for sustaining traditional arts. Missouri’s Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program was launched in 1985 with grants from both the National Endowment for the Arts and Missouri Arts Council with administrative support from Mizzou. In forty years, the art forms have been vast and multidisciplinary, from performative and material genres to occupational traditions—all passed down within communities in multigenerational settings from every region of the state. In the last 40 years, over 500 apprentices–hailing from rural, urban, and suburban communities across the Show-Me State–have participated in the project. Working with mentoring artists, the apprentices learn an array of skills rooted in deep cultural knowledge.

In 1985, ten teams were selected in five musical genres—gospel, jazz, polka, bluegrass, and old-time. The mentoring, or “master,” artists hailed from nine counties, from metro St. Louis and greater Kansas City to Missouri’s northwest and southwest corners.

The roots of the Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program are reflected in these ten photos.

In the collage, the images from left to right from the Missouri Folk Arts Program Records, 1982-2012 (C4035) Collection at the State Historical Society of Missouri.

Row One
1. Old-time fiddler Taylor McBaine (Boone Co.) and apprentice Barbara Dutton. Learn more about Mr. McBaine on BandCamp, thanks to the Missouri State Old Time Fiddlers Association.
2. Button box accordion player Arthur Treppler (St. Louis Co.) and apprentice John Winkler.
3. Old-time fiddler Howe Teague (Dent Co.) and apprentice Clark Miller. Missouri State Old Time Fiddlers Association has digitized Mr. Teague’s Ozark Memories. 

Row Two
1. Old-time fiddler Dean Johnston (Lamar Co.) with apprentice Mike McCluey. Ozark folklorist Gordon McCann recorded the team in 1987, and the audio cassette is available in the McCann Ozarks Music Collection.
2. Bluegrass fiddler Delbert Spray (Clark Co.) in the hat with apprentice Michelle Ogle. Among other accomplishments, Delbert Spray and Erma, his wife, long managed the Tri-State Bluegrass Association based in northeast Missouri’s Kahoka.
3. Kansas City jazz fiddler Claude Williams (Jackson Co.) with apprentices and rhythm guitarist John G. Stewart in background. As a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts’ Heritage Fellowship, Mr. Williams is a featured artist on the Masters of Traditional Arts website.

Row Three
1. Old-time fiddler Leonard Smith (Newton Co.) with apprentice John Harden. Ozark folklorist Gordon McCann also assessed this apprenticeship and recorded Smith and Harden during one of their lessons. The recording is available in the McCann Ozarks Music Collection.

2. Old-time fiddler Bob Walsh (Stone Co.) with one of four apprentices. Thanks to Missouri State Old Time Fiddlers Association, readers can find his album Old Time Ozark Fiddlin’ at BandCamp.
3. Gospel vocalist and pianist Doris Frazier (St. Louis Co.) with apprentice Alicia Jones. Doris Fiddmont Frazier (b. 1931) continues to live in Chesterfield and attend her long-time church Union Baptist in Westland Acres. Thanks to the Doris Fiddmont Frazier Foundation, her legacy is recorded and documented.
4. Old-time fiddler H.K. Silvey (Ozark Co.) with apprentice Dale Silvey. In 2017, Kaitlyn McConnell documented Mr. Silvey at Ozarks Alive.