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While I was organizing a material folk arts exhibit in December of 2006, the attention it received in print raised some interesting questions about different views of cultural traditions and how simple misperceptions can undermine the best laid plans of folklorists. As I continued mulling over these issues in my own project, I opened the New York Times on Tuesday, January 23, 2007, to see the front-page story, “In Frederick Douglass Tribute, Slave Folklore and Fact Collide.” The article concerned an expensive monument being installed at the north end of Central Park in New York City that features a bronze statue of abolitionist author and orator Frederick Douglass, sitting atop a mosaic that incorporates patterns from African American story quilts. According to historians cited in the article, the story quilt—whose symbolic designs are said to have guided escaping slaves to safety—cannot be confirmed by written history, such as contemporary slave narratives. The code was introduced in a popular book, by journalist Jacqueline Tobin and African American quilt and textile expert Raymond Dobard, about the ancestors of a Los Angeles teacher who passed down the tradition. While reading the article, I thought sadly of the predicament of the artist and the curator of the folklore-related project. Their work is in jeopardy on account of academic opposition, now amplified by the attention of the New York Times. It is a public folklorist’s nightmare: to have the very basis of a project yanked out from under you just as it is going public. The idea of the story quilt initially inspired me as a tale of invention and cunning in the face of inhumanity and injustice. Quite a few modern quilters have incorporated the “code” into their work and presentation, giving their art a deeper meaning than mere decorative bedding. All of this made me think about how a tradition is made and at what point its origin becomes immaterial to those who take ownership of it, because the story itself is compelling and has a meaning to subsequent generations. While doing fieldwork for an exhibit about spiritual, ceremonial, and religious traditions in folk arts I had asked my friend, the honored elder African American adviser to my work in Westchester, Mr. Surya Peterson, if he could recommend any artists from the black community. He had grown up in what was once a black neighborhood in Scarsdale. During a career in the postal service, he explored the arts and culture of the black community in Westchester, organizing fine arts exhibits and other events in White Plains, where he once ran a storefront gallery. He told me that African Americans did not have a religious tradition in material arts of their own, because all of that was lost through slavery and the erasure of indigenous culture that is so much a part of America’s story. He was essentially saying that the artists he knew could not be fit into a narrow definition of folklore based on multigenerational continuity of practice. While I believe that a curator has to adjust expectations about tradition from culture to culture, I did not press the point, and the exhibit took its own incomplete shape with assistance from folklorist Jean Crandall. Entitled “Expressions of the Spirit,” it included Ukrainian religious iconography, as well as decorative arts such as pysanky and embroidery, which are associated with ceremonial function. Opposite this was a display of the wedding arts of chupot and ketubot. Filling out the show were displays of Indian rangoli, Mexican renderings of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Arabic mosaic art, and Japanese ikebana and shodo associated with meditation. As the exhibit was presented around Hanukkah and Christmas, it naturally attracted a certain amount of attention from the newspapers, starved as they must be for real cultural content during the shopping season. The show was the subject of two articles in the New York Times, one in the regional Journal News, and three in local weeklies. The themes that seemed to resonate with reporters were the spiritual dimension of the artworks, the social and cultural diversity they represented, and the active engagement of the artists in the maintenance and passing on of their traditions. A final article that featured the exhibit appeared on January 7 in the New York Times. “Presenting Artists to New Audiences” used the exhibit to illustrate a theme of diversity and changing demographics of the suburban regions of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. It considered how regional cultural institutions are finding and presenting arts in nontraditional venues, such as juvenile detention facilities and schools, as well as the groups’ efforts to diversify audience participation at more conventional events like concerts and festivals. The article spanned three states and numerous programs, but failed to mention the contribution of the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) to encouraging folk and traditional arts, or the role of any folklorists, curators, or cultural specialists. Instead, the writer opted to focus entirely on executive directors, whose support is admittedly essential to such programs, but not sufficient to make them happen. Three of the six photographs accompanying the piece were taken from the “Expressions of the Spirit” exhibit, including two page-wide banner photos. While the exhibit and one of its featured artists were described adequately, the exhibit’s prominent position in the article seemed to imply that it was emblematic of the diversification efforts of major cultural institutions. As the unnamed curator, I could not help but feel a little used. It was, perhaps, a small taste of what many a folk artist identified as “diverse” must feel when institutions of the media and the cultural establishment rest their gaze, momentarily and imperfectly, upon them.

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