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…
Nov. 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,…
Sep. 14, 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/ …