Dec. 4, 2025
Roots & Routes
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–have participated in the project. Working with mentoring artists,…
Dec. 4, 2025
Howard W. Marshall, 2025 Living Traditions Fellow
Howard W. Marshall, PhD enjoyed a long career as a professional folklorist in both the public sector (e.g., Smithsonian Institution, American Folklife Center) and in academia, especially in the Department of Art History & Archaeology at the University of Missouri, where he also directed the cross-disciplinary Missouri Cultural Heritage Center for a decade. Marshall’s academic career included teaching courses that centered folklife in material culture, vernacular architecture, and historic preservation. For the Living Traditions Fellowship, though, nominator Thomas Coriell extoled Marshall’s contributions as an award-winning old-time fiddler and ethnographer who exhaustively practices, documents, and promotes the old-time music…
May 12, 2025
2025 Living Traditions Fellows
May 12, 2025 COLUMBIA, MO – The Missouri Folk Arts Program is excited to announce recipients of the 2025 Missouri Living Traditions Fellowship, an award to recognize the artistic excellence and exceptional lifetime achievement of living traditional artists and community scholars in the Show Me State. This year, Missouri Folk Arts recognizes four individuals for their deep-rooted contributions to traditional arts within their vibrant Missouri communities. Please join us in congratulating Bo Brown (Rogersville); Howard W. Marshall (Fulton); Pablo Sanhueza (Kansas City); and Marideth Sisco (West Plains). Stay tuned to Missouri Folk Arts’ social media to learn about upcoming special events…
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…