Dec. 23, 2025
Forty Years of Missouri’s Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program
– history, context, and impact The traditional arts are a cultural fusion of the arts and the humanities, where artistic excellence and repertoire, community ideals, and traditional knowledge are persistently entwined. Missouri’s Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program (TAAP) formally launched in fiscal year 1985 with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and Missouri Arts Council. As of 2025, the project has supported 464 apprenticeships—highlighting, elevating, and sustaining a vast array of traditional art forms and artists from every corner of the state. From April to December 2025, Missouri Folk Arts staff have co-coordinated activities supported by a Missouri Humanities’…
Dec. 17, 2025
Sisco & Brown, 2025 Living Traditions Fellows
Marideth A. Sisco, Ozark Storyteller, Musician, and Community Scholar, West Plains, Mo. and Bo Brown, Ozarks Forager and Musician, Rogersville, Mo. Ozarks traditional artists accept awards recognizing their contributions to the Show Me State Marideth Sisco and Bo Brown are bandmates and great friends, so they were absolutely thrilled to learn that they had both been chosen as 2025 Living Traditions Fellows as part of Missouri Folk Arts’ ongoing Show Me Folk initiative. The fellowships recognize the artistic excellence and exceptional lifetime achievement of living traditional artists and community scholars in the Show Me State. To date, nine exceptional Missouri…
Jan. 25, 2018
Arts and Access
Most of our friends, followers, and constituents know that the Missouri Folk Arts Program is based at the Museum of Art and Archaeology at the University of Missouri. MFAP has been anchored at the Museum since 1993, and, since 2013, MFAP has been housed in the same building (Mizzou North). For MFAP staff, being in the same physical space as our colleagues has been beneficial for any number of reasons, like being in close proximity to our colleagues, learning more about the Museum’s operations and collections, and finding opportunities occasionally to collaborate on projects. Typically, MFAP has programmed…