Discover Storied Objects from the Smithsonian Folklife Festival: The 70s
50+ Festivals, 230+ programs, 900+ objects, thousands of participants, millions of visitors, and still going strong.
Explore the rich history of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival through our material culture collection. Each object holds a story of community, tradition, collaboration, and conversation, bringing to life the spirit of the Festival as a celebration of traditional cultural heritage.
Chitlin' Time (1965) by Essie Ward and Photo by Zvonimir BebekSmithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage
1970 - Chitlin’ Time
Essie Ward was a self-taught painter from Arkansas. Ralph Rinzler purchased a number of her paintings during fieldwork for the 1970 Folklife Festival’s Arkansas program. They later came to the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage after his death and several now hang in the conference room.
“Grandma Moses” of the Ozarks
Ward (1902–1981) had always been interested in art but lived the life of a farmer and mother of seven until an illness in her late fifties left her unable to do heavy work. Around that time, a friend asked her to create a painting from a photograph for him.
The scene was of a woman with a churn in the doorway of a cabin. From there, she was inspired to create a series of paintings, fifty-five in all, that highlighted country Ozark life.
The series often featured a married couple, Miranda and Hezzakiah, usually shown engaged in farm work. Curator Susan Young of the Shiloh Museum pointed out that in some cases Ward painted Miranda doing the work while Hezzakiah was lounging around.
Folklife Festival founder Ralph Rinzler was no stranger to Arkansas and traveled there to collect folksongs in the 1960s. According to Young, one time when Rinzler was visiting folk singer Jimmy Driftwood at his home, he spotted one of Ward’s paintings and was enamored with it.
He asked to meet her, and Driftwood took him for a visit. He then ordered some paintings. The Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections contains a handwritten receipt from Ward dated 1965 regarding an order of four paintings.
The three currently on display in the Center’s conference room are dated 1967 and all feature Hezzakiah and Miranda. Ward had many customers who ordered handmade paintings. Each one, including “Chitlin’ Time,” bore her stamp...
...a pair of white rabbit ears somewhere in the painting.
—Jeff Place, senior archivist and curator
Bicentennial Site Embroidery (1976) by Ethel Wright Mohamed and Photo by Zvonimir BebekSmithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage
1976 - Bicentennial Site Embroidery
Ethel Wright Mohamed of Belzoni, Mississippi, became a favorite Festival participant during the 1974 Mississippi program. Ten years earlier, she had turned to embroidery to commemorate life with her husband who had recently died, carrying on an age-old domestic art form in a distinctively personal way.
Envisioning a bird’s eye view of the Bicentennial program
“The lovely thing about this piece is that it reminds me of people. We brought in a cable car (for Working Americans) and had guys from San Francisco who rang the bells. They all had their own distinctive kind of pattern ring. I can hear those sounds again when I look at this…”
–Diana Parker, Festival director
Working with the Folklife Festival designer to plot the layout of the 1976 Bicentennial program, Ethel Mohamed sketched and then stitched a remarkable prediction of the great American celebration set to unfold on the National Mall.
The Festival spanned three months and included a large roster of participants who cycled in and out of Washington every week for twelve weeks.
In addition to the core Festival areas, Mohamed stitched lively tableaus throughout...
...children playing...
...a couple kissing...
...a rabbit sneaking lettuces.
The final embroidery is five feet long and hews to the plan so well its program elements can still be easily deciphered. As a creative endeavor, Mohamed’s memory picture is a beloved object at the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage and new details are noticed on almost every viewing. Two figures central to the Festival’s history are included...
Smithsonian Secretary S. Dillon Ripley—who enthusiastically supported founding director Ralph Rinzler’s plans to create an event to give voice to the country’s traditional artists—kneels in the upper right corner to feed some hungry ducks. It is a clever nod to his academic field of ornithology.
Down front and center, Rinzler plays a fiddle on the mainstage, identified by an “R” on his right sleeve.
Mohamed herself sits under a tent, stitching yet another memory picture.
This engaging piece is a tour de force of narrative embroidery that not only reflects Mohamed’s special talents but conveys her love of the Festival community that embraced her so warmly each time she came to Washington.
—Erin Younger, exhibition curator
