Highlights Archives
"Person to Person" Exhibit Now Online
Don't know a burl bowl from a bingo basket? Wondering what whirligigs, dancing bears, and Robin Yount have in common? If you didn't get a chance to see the recent folk culture exhibition at the Wisconsin Historical Museum, or if you want to revisit it, you can now experience it online.
Person to Person: Communicating Identity through Wisconsin Folk Artifacts has been added to the Wisconsin Historical Society's roster of online exhibits. The online presentation includes dozens of fascinating objects representing a variety of functions, designs, locales, and ethnic contexts. Folk carvings and whittlings, Ojibwe fish decoys, Norwegian trunks and log chairs, and Hmong story cloths are just some examples of how regional folk art conveys different notions of identity. Person to Person shows how people, through objects, communicate identity within defined communities, between communities, or across cultures and time. The objects serve as material expressions of individual and communal values, customs and traditions. When taken together, they help define a Wisconsin sense of place and contribute to our understanding of regional culture.
The online presentation replicates the interpretive structure and thematic groupings of the gallery exhibition and is easily navigable. Funding for the project was provided by the Dane County Cultural Affairs Commission. Person to Person was planned in cooperation with the University of Wisconsin Center for the Humanities and the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures. Additional funds for the project were provided by the Madison Community Foundation and the Overture Foundation.
Coming to Milwaukee soon
Person to Person also can be seen in person at the Milwaukee County Historical Society between August 12, 2006, and January 28, 2007.
Photo (above) by Lewis Koch, Wisconsin Folk Museum Woodland Indian Traditional Artist Documentation Project.
:: Posted July 19, 2006
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