Guest Curator Archive

We are honored and grateful to our Guest Curators for sharing their collections with us. This page will allow you to see what you might have missed or give you an opportunity to revisit their treasures.

Kerry Noonan

I inherited these from my father, Tom Noonan, who worked in the music business, and who collected music business memoribilia. He had a large Nipper (about 3 or 4 feet high, which now belongs to my nephew), a smaller one (about 10″, which I have), and this salt and pepper shaker set.

I purchased this on ebay, when we were compiling artifacts for a proposed exhibit of the visionary art of Edith Tenbrink, whose work and whose spiritual order was influenced by Freemasonry.

This version of a Russian matryoshka nesting doll was purchased in Moscow, when I traveled there for a presentation in 2010. The innermost doll is a Christ child, appropriately nestled within the body of the larger dolls with the Virgin Mary on them. The larger two dolls have different icons of the Virgin on them. As I was shopping in a market, browsing various matryoshka dolls (including one with the 4 Beatles, one with various Russian and U.S. leaders, and one, which I gave to my sister, which had versions of Michael Jackson on each doll), the man who owned the stall heard me coughing. He urged me to buy this doll, since, he told me, “She is good for [cough, cough],” and patted his chest.

This combination of Old World Evil Eye blue beads and a modern Goddess spirituality figure (with raised arms, breasts and a spiral on the belly) shows both the adaptation of an old form to a new belief system, and the borrowing (and/or appropriation?) of old folk magical practices by the modern Pagan or New Age spirituality movements.

When I was in China in June of 2009, on a CIEE tour “Ethnic Minorities of Southwest China,” our tour guide brought us to his research site, a village of the Tungpu people, who are trying to gain official recognition as a minority nationality (minzu). They performed for us what the government calls dixi, or “local opera,” but what the Tungpu people call “dancing the gods.” These masks are worn by performers on the forehead; under them, they wear a rolled towel, and a black face veil, so the mask sits on the upper part of the head, and the performer can see through the face veil. The performers were traditionally male, but when I saw them, there were a few women also performing. I bought this mask, which, although it was not used in the performance I saw, is a type of mask used in such performances.

Brandy Wilde

I wore with a black peignor in my French act.

Part of the gypsy act costume.

Worn by European dancers instead of a g-string. It is held on by tape and hurts like hell to take off if you have any pubic hair.

About 3″ x 4″ Used in the French act

Three rings worn on stage in many acts. The large stones are green African amythyst, purple amythyst, and bright orange topaz.

It really needs a model to do it justice but I couldn’t get a size 8 model. I wore it to gogo dance when I returned to the US and didn’t know what to do with myself.

They fit over the g-string.

Erika Brady

Carved angel by Sabanita Lopez Ortiz, Cordova, New Mexico. Purchased by collector 2014.

Assemblage: St. Joseph the Carpenter by Chris Radus, from a series entitled “Working Class Saints.” Niche is an upended aged wooden tool carrier representing a carpenter’s workshop, with worktable, coffee cup, basket for shavings, and sign “Joe + Son Woodworks . Saint is an embellished GI Joe wearing jeans, leather work-apron and hair-protecting bandanna. Halo is a radial-saw blade. Gift to the collector, 2014.

Decorative bottle-tree created by artist Chris Radus, inspired by traditional Southern yard-art.

1968 Gibson J-50 formerly belonging to National Heritage Fellowship awardee Eddie Pennington, along with carved cedar walking-stick with head depicting stylized Erika Brady and carved inscription on the shaft. Gifts of Eddie Pennington honoring our long and blessed friendship.

Repurposed water bottle created as memorial tribute to immigrants lost in the desert crossing to the border. From a series produced by the aid group Los Samaritanos. Items attached to the bottle include found objects from the trail and others, including an earring, Mexican currency, a plastic calaveras, milagros, statements of protest, a painted image of OL of Guadalupe. Surmounted by a small glow-in-the-dark plastic figure of the of the Blessed Mother. Gift from artist Juanito Jiménez, New Mexico, 2014.

Patrick A. Polk

Painting by Terry Gaskins, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. 2016.

Beaded and sequined portrait of the Vodou divinity Ezili Danto envisioned as the Black Madonna ofCzęstochowa, Port-au-Prince, Haiti, ca. 2011.

Votive-inspired painting by David Mecalco, Mexico City, Mexico, ca. 2013.

Snake Handler painting with biblical verse by Bryan Cunningham, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, 2016.

Painted calabash with popular biblical verse, St. George’s, Grenada, ca. 2013.

Dr. Lydia Fucsko

Lydia’s upcoming children’s book “My life is in the Toilet” focuses on the plight of species like the green tree frog which is often forced to find rather unusual alternative accommodation after water mismanagement, pollution and habitat loss have left it with nowhere else to go. By utilising photography in new and ingenious ways, merging science and art, capitalising on the universal appeal of adorable amphibians and incorporating terrific ‘toilet humour’, Lydia hopes to inspire the next generation about the need to protect precious wetland habitat and encourage direct engagement with the environment.

It was once a common species, but serious declines have occurred in sections of the range (Mahony 1999). Ehmann and White (1997) noted that in New South Wales the species had disappeared from sites in the central and southern highlands. It is currently widespread throughout the Murray River valley but has disappeared from a number of sites along the Murrumbidgee River (Mahony 1999) and there are no recent records from the Monaro District near the Victorian border (G. Gillespie pers. comm.). It persists in isolated populations in the greater Melbourne area, and isolated populations are known from a few sites in central Victoria and Gippsland. A similar decline has been noted in Tasmania, and it is now almost absent from the midlands of Tasmania. In New Zealand, where the species is introduced, there are many thousands, although local declines due to chytridiomycosis and/or introduced Gambusia fish have been observed (Source http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/12152/0).

Differing in appearance only slightly from the corroboree frog (Pseudophryne corroboree), the northern corroboree frog has the same distinctive bright yellow and black striped back. However, the stripes are a greener shade of yellow and are also a little narrower. The underside has white, black and yellow-green blotches. Females are larger than males and, unusually, neither sex has webbed toes. In some areas, ‘corroboree’ is an aboriginal word for a gathering or meeting – where traditionally the attendees are adorned with yellow markings not unlike those of this rare frog. (Source http://www.arkive.org/northern-corroboree-frog/pseudophryne-pengilleyi/).

The Red-crowned Toadlet is facing ever increasing threats, but thanks to some dedicated volunteers, help is on the way. Restricted exclusively to sandstone areas around Sydney, the toadlets’ home has been impacted by habitat loss due to sandstone harvesting for garden landscaping as well as pollution, disease and changed fire regimes. The 3cm-long red-crowned toadlet is listed as vulnerable by the New South Wales State Government and already some local populations of the frog have become extinct. Professor Michael Mahoney from the school of environmental and life sciences at Newcastle University believes that human interaction is the biggest threat to the species. “Mostly human impacts affect their habitat,” he says. “Unfortunately, habitat of the red-crowned toadlet overlaps with urban development on the sandstone ridges of the Sydney basin.” (Source http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/blogs/ag-society/2013/01/toadlet-in-trouble).

Consider what it might be like to drink the urine of one particular species of amphibian, which could literally save your life! It was a common practice for Aborigines to squeeze the water out of a frog and drink it. In the words of Waite (1929), “water may be obtained by squeezing the body of the frog, and the Australian native will win through where unattended white men would perish of thirst” (Bayly 1999, p. 23). Here the amphibian being referenced is Cyclorama platycephala, otherwise referred to as the Water-holding Frog, or Tiddalik, a character from the Dreaming stories, told by Australian Aborigines about the history of their country. This species, indigenous to central Australia, has evolved a unique method of surviving in an environment which might not seem particularly suited to frogs. The Water-holding Frog evolved the process of drinking and absorbing water through its skin until its body became a store of water (Bayly 1999, p. 23; Springer & Holley 2013, p. 393). The story of Tiddalik is the stuff of legend and as an enduring story of the Dreamtime it has been translated into many modern children’s books the world over.

Verna Gillis

China-Painted wood and horse hair braids-2007

Northern Mexico-Paper-2007

Berlin-1994

Upstate New York-1940s

Peru-1975

Berlin-1994

Michael E. Bell

The Mercy Brown exhumation, which took place on 17 March 1892, in Exeter, Rhode Island, followed the typical pattern: her heart and liver were excised and burned to ashes, which were to be ingested by, Edwin, her dying brother. Edwin died shortly after, but Mercy’s sisters lived on for years. The exhumation of Mercy Brown, and her mother and sister, is by far the most well-known vampire narrative in America. Her story appears in every possible medium, from spoken, written, and printed, to film, video, and the Internet (a search of which yields millions of pages for Mercy Brown). Although her plight is well-documented, and most of the facts surrounding her exhumation are fixed in reliable sources, she and her story have been expanded, compressed, twisted, and pulled into every vampire shape imaginable. The oral narrative of Mercy Brown in its earliest stage of development, however, remains the family narrative that arose soon after her corpse was dissected; it has circulated, in conjunction with parallel community narratives, for more than a hundred years.

Augmenting the eye-witness accounts of vampire activity in New England is a startling case of actual physical evidence. In 1990, Connecticut State Archaeologist, Nick Bellantoni, excavated an unmarked family cemetery, in use from 1757 to about 1830, in the town of Griswold. One of the twenty-nine human remains unearthed in the cemetery, Burial 4, was so extraordinary that it was sent to the Museum of Health and Science for analysis by Paul Sledzik, a forensic anthropologist. The complete skeleton of a man, the best preserved of the cemetery, had been buried in a crypt with stone slabs lining the sides and top of the coffin. The community apparently wanted him to stay put! Bellantoni had never seen anything like it. He said, “It looks like this guy was buried long enough to decompose, dug up, some of his parts were rearranged . . . and then he was buried again.” On the lid of the hexagonal, wooden coffin, an arrangement of brass tacks spelled out “JB-55,” presumably the initials and age at death of this individual. When the grave was opened, J.B.’s skull and thigh bones were found in a kind of “skull and crossbones” pattern on top of his ribs and vertebrae, which were also rearranged. Later analysis by Sledzik revealed that J.B.’s ribs contained lesions (or scars) that indicated he had a chronic pulmonary infection, likely tuberculosis. The following scenario is perhaps the most plausible: As a last resort—to spare the lives of the family and stop consumption from spreading into the community—J.B.’s body was exhumed so that his heart (or his entire corpse) could be burned. When his body was unearthed, however, J.B. was found to be in an advanced stage of decomposition. Perhaps his ribs and vertebrae were in disarray as a result of a search for the remains of his heart. Finding no heart—and with no flesh to burn—J.B.’s skull and thigh bones were rearranged, a practice that has precedent in Europe, including Great Britain. Using his J.B.’s skull as a base model, forensic artist Sharon Long created a reconstruction of his face. You may be staring into the face of one of America’s authentic vampires.

More compelling than Mercy’s story, however, is the first-person account of the Reverend Justus Forward (1730-1814), Congregational Minister of Belchertown, Massachusetts for more than fifty-eight years. In a letter to a friend, Forward wrote about embarking on a trip with his daughter, Mercy (not an uncommon name back then), to a nearby town. He describes how she began to hemorrhage, which causes him great concern, especially in light of the fact that three of his daughters had already died of consumption and two others, including Mercy, were ill. He writes: “I had consulted many about opening the graves of some of the deceased, to see whether there were any signs of the dead preying on the living; and though many advised to it, and most thought it awful, yet Dr. Williams . . . and some others spoke in such a manner about it, that some of the family were not soon reconciled to it. However, they consented.” Forward goes on to describe how, on the previous Friday, the grave of his mother-in-law was opened. “She had been buried almost three years,” he writes, and she was “wasted away to a mere skeleton. . . . It was suggested that perhaps she was not the right person.” So she was reburied. Forward continues, “Since I had begun to search, I concluded to search further, and this morning opened the grave of my daughter [Martha Forward Dwight] . . . who had died—the last of my three daughters—almost six years ago. . . . On opening the body, the lungs were not dissolved, but had blood in them. . . . The lungs did not appear as we would suppose they would in a body just dead, but far nearer a state of soundness than could be expected. The liver, I am told, was as sound as the lungs. We put the lungs and liver in a separate box, and buried it in the same grave, ten inches or a foot, above the coffin.” (This variant of the ritual is unique, as far as I know.) Alas, Mercy was not spared, but Forward’s other three children survived the consumption epidemic.

Vampire incidents seem to have been almost commonplace among some New England communities. Popular authors wrote about it. A town council in Rhode Island voted to allow a man to exhume his daughter’s corpse. Half the population of a Vermont town turned out to witness an exhumation and heart-burning. To these very public renditions of the consumption ritual, we can add a newspaper notice inviting “all interested” to a family’s exhumation. Under the heading, “Bodies to be Exhumed,” the Montrose Democrat twice published the following paid announcement: “The subscriber being the only survivor of a large family of brothers and sisters, all of whom have died of that dread disease, consumption, and whose children are following them by the same disease, had consented that the bodies of some of the first who died may be exhumed to satisfy the belief entertained that it will arrest the further progress of the disease, which is destroying the remaining survivors. The exhumation will take place on Saturday, April 29th, at 10 o’clock A. M., at the burying ground on David Whitney’s land, in Lenox township, this county. This notice is given that all interested may be present. WM. B.. TOURJE Harford, April 10, 1871” William Tourje was sixty-four years of age when the notice was published. Although this event took place in northeastern Pennsylvania, the federal census of 1850 shows that William and his brother, Jonathan, were born in Rhode Island. Between 1817 and 1819, the family relocated from Rhode Island to Pennsylvania. Five weeks after the exhumation, the same newspaper published a letter, submitted by an anonymous “spectator,” describing the ritual in detail. He wrote that “probably a hundred” people attended, including two physicians. On opening the third grave, “behold! a vine was found!! the flesh was all decayed, but everything else remained as when placed in the ground, as near as could be expected; the silk dress and a bosom pin, in which the deceased was buried remaining entire. The vine found, was taken out,” and inspected by the physicians. The spectator’s concluding remarks highlight the desperate situation that led many families to the consumption ritual: “Further investigations were made, but I understand that there is some talk of taking up the wife of Mr. Snyder, the last one buried.—There is in all, of the family, 13 in number, children and grand-children, buried in this year, and one buried in the burying ground at the Baptist church near Elder Tower’s, and all but one at least, have died of consumption, the youngest being a grand-child only three years of age, and only one of eight children now living.”

These vampire incidents (or folk medical practices, or consumption rituals) did not go unnoticed by the literati. Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) recorded in his journal, dated 26 September 1859, the following entry: “I have just read of a family in Vermont who, several of the members having died of consumption, just burned the lungs, heart and liver of the last deceased, in order to prevent any more from having it.” Thoreau probably was referring to a case from Winhall, Vermont. The text, which appeared in at least ten newspapers, dated from the 20th to the 29th of September 1859, closely matches Thoreau’s: “A Mrs. Prescott Lawrence, of Winhall, Vt., died a few days since of consumption, and as a member of the family had previously died of the same disease, the family went through the superstitious farce of burning the lungs, heart and liver of the deceased to prevent any more from dying of the same disease.” Thoreau’s interest in this event surely was more than just morbid curiosity. At the time of this entry, he knew he had consumption, which caused his death three years later.

Patricia A. Atkinson

Patricia A. Atkinson has been the Folklife Program Coordinator for the Nevada Arts Council since 2007.

Tobey served as a master artist in the Nevada Arts Council’s Apprenticeship Program while in his late 90s and made pipes until he passed away just short of his 101st birthday.

Eagle-Lambert is a prolific weaver and creative beader. She received a Nevada Governor’s Arts Award for Excellence in folk art.

Zetaruk was a master artist mentoring apprentices in the pysanky tradition well into her mid-90s.

Originally from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Southern Mexico, Siquenza brought his family’s textile traditions to Nevada.

McCuin is a native Nevadan and premiere Western engraver/jeweler.

Rachel E. Spector

Contains healing water from the shrine’s grotto-Lourdes, France-Christian

The “milagro,” miracle, is an offering placed near a statue of a Catholic saint for thanksgiving when a hand disorder is healed.

Small tablets used as a cathartic several generations ago. Purchased in an antique store in Boston, Massachusetts.

Prayer card illustrating the Statue of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ is Bacares near Almeria, Spain. The hair on the statue grows and is frequently cut. The strands are then given to people for healing.

Small metal “milagros”-examples of a leg, foot, hands, children, and an arm.

Michael Owen Jones

Mojo Painting by Dr. Bob

Bookcase Rocker by Cornett

Space Ship by Ionel

Bike Taxi Toy

Paddy Bowman

Deep in the isolated Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica over Easter in 1998, I was staying at a scientific research station. The old-growth forest there is protected by the government, but the guards had gone home for the holiday. The sound of chainsaws came from different parts of the forest throughout the week and huge trucks hauled enormous trees out of the forest before the guards returned. A biologist told me that a family could live for a year for the price of one tree. One day I met a man selling a few wooden carvings, even this far off the beaten path of major tourism, he had found a market among visitors to the research station. I’m a bird nut and loved how easily I could spot gorgeous birds of all sizes in Costa Rica, including a couple of trogan species. This trogan came home with me. The artist penciled his name and the year on the bottom. I paid him $25, more than the $5 he was asking.

From the New Yorker, Nov. 8th, 1982.

Unlike the dots on faux folk art that I see in too many shops and galleries, the dots on the carved wooden chicken on the right fit in with many other pieces of artwork I saw in Guatemalan markets in 1993. I don’t know why dots were prevalent, but they were. I bought so many pieces in the Antigua market I bought a handmade cloth duffle bag to carry them home. This chicken, carver unknown, has a crack at the neck so was cheap even by this market’s standards, $5. I also bought a dotted mask and a dotted leopard from different vendors. Antigua is famous for tourism, which has fueled the market for many crafts. The carvers are not making these chickens for their homes but for tourists’ homes.

These very different birds come from rural areas of Central America, where I bought each of them. The bird on the left is a species of trogan, large, colorful birds of the tropics, bought in Costa Rica. The chicken came from Guatemala.

On a clear, cold Monday morning in February 1982, I stood on the courthouse square in Scottsboro, Alabama, interviewing traders who regularly sold goods at First Monday Trade Day. Once a raucous, sprawling event where people traded hounds, guns, and farm equipment, the affair had evolved into a flea market attended by tourists, tv crews from near and far, farmers from surrounding states, and locals. Only the older traders still showed up on Mondays, the big crowds came on the weekend. A red pickup truck suddenly pulled up. My folklorist’s heartbeat sped when I saw that the truck bed was filled with split white oak baskets. A woman hopped out, and I hurried to talk with her. She was on her way home to Woodbury, Tennessee, after delivering baskets to the Cherokee Museum in North Carolina. She explained that their shop sold them, with the implication they were Cherokee made. I didn’t yet know that Cannon County, Tennessee, was a hotbed of basket makers, but this woman, alas I have lost her name and address, told me she was a 7th-generation basket maker. A graduate student, I could only afford two, $15 each. Months later a quarter-page ad in the New Yorker caught my eye. Three split white oak baskets hovered above the text, “Deep in the Cherokee National Forest of Tennessee, skilled craftsmen have kept alive an art and a tradition.” Price for my basket in the New York City-based Anne Rothschild Country Collection: $68. Never mind these baskets were made by a woman from Middle Tennessee. I mailed a photocopy of the ad to the basket maker to let her know she could charge more next time. Extensive fieldwork by folklorists in Cannon County has since put the region on the map and ensured that basket makers can earn a fair price and show their work in galleries near and far.

A dear friend who knew of my interest in the sweetgrass baskets of Low Country South Carolina, spied the basket on the left at a yard sale in Alexandria, Virginia, in 2002. She got the impression that a young couple were selling some of their wedding gifts. She bought this basket for $10. It’s a double loop fruit basket that would have easily cost the giver a couple of hundred dollars. The history of tourism and sweetgrass baskets is long and complicated. The research of folklorists has helped make this a revered tradition that can sustain basket makers economically, put their work in fine art museums, and enrich understanding of this nation’s complex race relations history through material culture.

On the left is a Gullah sweetgrass basket, the only African basket type made in the U.S., and on the right a split white oak basket, common among Anglo basket makers in many parts of the U.S. Both types were working baskets in the 18th and 19th century and have evolved into collectibles that have found their way into scholarly publications and museums. I came by both baskets through serendipity.

Mariah Chase