A blog sponsored by the Michigan State University Museum's Michigan Traditional Arts Program, a partnership with the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs. Sharing news and information about the Great Lakes Folk Festival, Quilt Index, the MSU Museum's traditional arts activities, Great Lakes traditional artists and arts resources, and much more. Development of content for this blog supported by funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

MSU Museum students intern with Smithsonian Institution's Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C.


The Smithsonian's annual folklife festival held on the national mall typically draws more than 1 million visitors to learn about history, heritage and expressive culture. This year, Michigan State University is helping produce this enormous event! 

Four students with ties to the MSU Museum will be interning at the Smithsonian Institution's annual Folklife Festival, which will be held this June and July to showcase diverse, authentic and living traditions and to help foster understanding of expressive culture.

Current MSU Museum intern Emily Langenberg will be in Washington, D.C. for eight weeks beginning this June to work on their festival before coming back to help with the MSU Museum's Great Lakes Folk Festival in August. Recent Residential College in the Arts and Humanities (RCAH) graduate Hailey Chenevert had an internship with the Great Lakes Folk Festival. Last fall, she moved to D.C. to start working on the 2012 Folklife Festival. Meredith Brown, another graduate from RCAH, has an internship to help this summer, and Meghan Burke, an Art History graduate, will be at the Folklife Festival to work the Children's Area.

In addition to the four students, C. Kurt Dewhurst, director of arts and cultural initiatives for University Outreach and Engagement and curator of folklife and cultural heritage at the MSU Museum, is co-curating the Folklife Festival's "Campus and Community" program. The Smithsonian Folklife Festival is held outdoors on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. between the Smithsonian museums. Festival hours June 27-July 1 and
July 4-8 are 11 a.m. - 5:30 p.m., with special events taking place most evenings. Learn more at: <http://www.festival.si.edu/>http://www.festival.si.edu/.

The Smithsonian program will be recreated on a smaller scale as a featured part of the MSU Museum's 2012 Great Lakes Folk Festival, Aug. 10-12 in downtown East Lansing, with help from these Smithsonian interns. Meanwhile, MSU Museum technical aide Lori Hagadorn, a Smithsonian intern in 2009, will also assist with the Great Lakes Folk Festival event this summer. MSU Museum is Michigan's first Smithsonian affiliate. For more, see <http://museum.msu.edu>http://museum.msu.edu.
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