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 traditions…
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…
April 11, 2025
MO Humanities Grant News
Missouri Humanities has awarded a $12,550 grant to the Missouri Folk Arts Program to support an event series that shares the meaning and matter of its Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program (TAAP), one of the oldest and longest-running efforts of its kind in the country. “Our Missouri Humanities grant provides us the opportunity to celebrate TAAP’s four decades and, by extension, hundreds of traditional artists who have participated over the years,” says Lisa Higgins, director of Missouri Folk Arts Program. “Every TAAP team from 1985 to the present has illustrated in word and practice how folk art…
Sep. 16, 2024
Ozarks Community Scholar Suzi Vause
Welcome back to Stories from the Field and a new post in our Show Me Folk blog. The blog is dedicated space for staff, student workers, traditional artists, cultural experts, consultants, and community scholars to share photo essays on an array of topics in Missouri’s traditional arts and folklife. Guest blogger Suzi Vause is a long-time friend of Missouri Folk Arts. In 1996, she apprenticed in walking wheel spinning with the late Elma Moss. Suzi excelled at spinning on the large wheel, and the very next year, she mentored her own apprentice in the tradition. Suzi is known by all as…
May 31, 2024
Sharon Bear Foehner, 2024 Living Traditions Fellow
Sharon Bear Foehner, St. Louis, Mo. Blues Musician As a child, Sharon Bear Foehner trained as a classical musician, playing bass violin. Then, she picked up the guitar in 1977. Landing in St. Louis ten years later, Foehner quickly found the St. Louis blues and immersed herself in its culture. She points to the tradition’s greats as her mentors, including Bennie Smith, Johnnie Johnson, Oliver Sain, Renee Smith, Jimmy Rodgers, James Crutchfield, and 1985 National Heritage Fellow Henry “Mule” Townsend. Highlights in her career include performing with legendary blues musicians, like Rufus Thomas,…
May 13, 2024
Missouri Folk Arts Program Announces 2024 Living Traditions Sustainer Fellows
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. Please join us in congratulating: Gordon McCann (Springfield),…
March 18, 2024
On the Lookout for Traditional Artists in NW MO
Missouri Folk Arts’ staff is on the lookout for traditional artists in Northwest Missouri counties, from St. Joseph the the NW corner of the state, with particular focus on Andrew, Atchison, Holt, Nodaway, and Worth. Please reach out to staff with names, locations, and contact information. You can find our contact information here: https://mofolkarts.missouri.edu/about-us/our-staff/ …
March 18, 2024
KOMU 8, Hallsville Fiddle Festival
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…
Jan. 23, 2024
Tribute to Fr. Moses Berry
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…