2 minute read
MUSEUM OF INTERNATIONAL FOLK ART
FY2020-2021 CONNECTING AND REFLECTING
Folk art to go and online | Some 3,736
free art activity kits were distributed by the museum’s education department to youth statewide, including at tribal libraries, in FY2021. The kits included art materials for making cornhusk dolls, Japanese Koinobori Carp kites inspired by the exhibition Yokai: Ghosts and Demons of Japan and miniature recycled works reflecting each student’s unique community. Museum educators also offered virtual classroom visits on various folk art topics to pre-K through 8th-grade students around the state.
A new network | Alaka Wali, curator of anthropology at Chicago’s Field Museum, took the helm of a new advisory committee focused on cultural representations in the museum. With the help of visitor and staff feedback, the committee will create a new interpretive plan for the Girard Wing permanent exhibition Multiple Visions: A Common Bond. Possible outcomes include interactive components and new gallery and audio guides.
Left: Toyokuni III, Actor Onoe Waichi II as a Tofu Seller and a One-Legged Umbrella Monster, from the series Magic Lantern Slides in a Dance of Seven Changes, 1857. Paper, ink. Museum of International Folk Art collection. As seen in Yokai: Ghosts and Demons of Japan. Photo courtesy Museum of International Folk Art.
34 educational programs delivered 245 virtual and in-person classes 6,214 schoolchildren reached 1 in-person and 5 online exhibitions $214,000 exhibitions and education support $63,000 event revenues $517,000 total private support
—Leslie Fagre, Director of Education, Museum of International Folk Art, Fall 2020
The masked moment | #mask: Creative Responses to the Global Pandemic opened in May 2021, reflecting creative, personal and political expressions through pandemic- inspired masks and art. Santero Arthur López’s 2020 Altar Vision paid humorous homage to coronavirus tropes, including hand sanitizer, soap, Corona beer and online life.
Right: Arthur Lopez, 2020 Altar Vision, 2020. Pine, rabbit hide gesso, pine sap varnish and grain alcohol, beeswax coat, jelutong, natural water-based pigments. Museum of International Folk Art collection. Photo courtesy Museum of International Folk Art. Below: Kemely Gomez, bilingual educator at the Museum of International Folk Art. Photo courtesy Museum of International Folk Art.
Folk art speaks many languages | Dual language outreach efforts were broadened by museum workshops through schools, libraries and other nonprofits. These popular programs connected bilingual communities to the museum, which houses art from many immigrant homelands. More than 120 families regularly attended summer outreach programs and onsite museum events.
