This series documents Miami-Dade artists’ contributions to the 1986 and 1990 celebrations of the Florida Folk Festival. The materials consist primarily of audio cassette tape recordings of demonstrations and presentations by Miami-Dade artists at the festival. The Florida Folk Festival was first celebrated in 1953 under the sponsorship of the Florida Folk Festival Association near White Springs. Between 1976 and 1995, the State of Florida’s Bureau of Florida Folklife Programs and Museum of Florida History coordinated the Festival. During the 34th Annual Florida Folk Festival in 1986, a dedicated area was designated for Miami-Dade Folklife; this was the first time Dade County artists were featured at the Festival in a significant way. Featured artists were discovered during fieldwork for the 1985 Miami-Dade Folklife Survey conducted by Lauri Sommers, Tina Bucuvalas, and Nancy Nusz (HMF9002) and featured in the first annual Traditions Festival in Miami two months earlier (HMF9004). Since the festival’s 50th anniversary celebration in 2002, the Florida Park Service assumed full responsibility for coordinating and producing the Festival. Most of the items in this series are copies of originals held in the State Archives of Florida in Tallahassee, many of which have been digitized and made available through the Florida Memory Project (http://www.floridamemory.com/).
This series consists of documents generated by the “Florida Folklife: Traditional Arts from the Panhandle to the Keys” project, which included extensive fieldwork and culminated in an exhibition on display at the Historical Museum of Southern Florida (now HistoryMiami Museum) between September 18, 1988 and January 3, 1999. The exhibition subsequently traveled to four other museums in Florida throughout 1999 and 2000: the Orange County Historical Society (Orlando); the Museum of Florida History (Tallahassee); Museum of Science and History (Jacksonville); and the Tampa Bay History Center (Tampa). The project also produced a 104-page book—Florida Folklife: Traditional Arts in Contemporary Communities, edited by Stephen Stuempfle—which is included in the series. The book includes essays by Stuempfle and Tina Bucuvalas, then presents brief profiles (including photographs) of 84 artists whose respective traditions are organized into four categories: Maritime, Marsh, and Ranching Traditions; Domestic and Decorative Traditions; Ritual and Festive Traditions; and Musical Traditions. Artist profiles—researched and written by more than a dozen fieldworkers—include: Nick Toth (Diving Helmets), Billy Davis (Spurs), Ethel Santiago (Sweetgrass Baskets), Manuel Vega (Bridcages and Kites), Honey Perlman (Ketubot), Bahamas Junkanoo Revue (Junkanoo Costumes), and Romeo Ragbir (Tassa Drums). Materials include: a copy of Florida Folklife; photographic 35mm slides; and audiocassette tape recordings of interviews, musical performances, a radio program promoting the exhibition, and audio amplified in the exhibition.
Additional digital formats of audio and image files available: Records were digitized 2015 – 2016. Users must contact staff ahead of visit for access.
HistoryMiami’s South Florida Folklife Center (SFFC) carried out the Florida Jai-Alai Project, a fieldwork project aimed at identifying and documenting the state's leading practitioners of the Basque ballgame's traditions. Research was conducted in Orlando, Fort Pierce, Hamilton County, Gainesville, Dania Beach, Quincy, Ocala, St. Petersburg, West Palm Beach, and Miami. The project began in June 2010 and concluded in December 2012. This project was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Michael Knoll created the project and was the lead researcher. Robert L. Stone was the photographer and conducted fieldwork in North and Central Florida. The Florida Folklife Program also assisted with archival research.
Access Notes: This collection consists of born digital materials. Please contact staff ahead of your visit to access these materials.
Audio:
Files include MP3 recordings, interview logs, and transcripts of interviews with Christophe Forestier, Benjamin Bueno, David Dodd, Juan Ramon Arrasate, Kathleen Jones, Manuel Ruiz, Martin Fleischman, Richard Berenson, Stuart Neiman, Juan Jose Carroquino, Clemente Garcia, Jesus Pradera, Wagimen Soemanto, Carlos Pita, Glen Richards, Charles David Brower, Juan Leon, Raphael Ferragut, Santiago Echaniz, Francisco Elorriaga, Roger Coscarat, Dale Popp, Ivan Martinez, Luis Gardner, Carlos Campos, and Paco Gonzalez.
Images:
Files include JPEG and CR2 images taken at frontons in Orlando, Fort Pierce, Hamilton County, Quincy, St. Petersburg, Ocala, Dania Beach, Miami, and West Palm Beach. Photographs by Robert L. Stone.
Fieldwork Documents:
Files include notes for fieldwork conducted in Hamilton County and Orlando.
Grant Documents:
Files include documents submitted for the National Endowment for the Arts grant application and reporting documents.
This series consists of materials documenting the Folk Arts in the Schools Program, a project created by the Historical Association of Southern Florida (now HistoryMiami Museum) and Dade County Public Schools to cultivate local students’ appreciation for traditional and folk arts of various ethnic groups. The program was intended to develop students’ aesthetic sensibilities and self-esteem by presenting high-quality examples of traditional arts created by skilled practitioners, as well as expanding students’ knowledge of folk arts as distinct from art forms normally taught in the schools. Schools with large ethnic and minority populations were targeted for participation. An initial pilot project developed curriculum materials based on fieldwork and bibliographic research derived from “Traditions: The South Florida Folk Festival” (HMF9004) and specifically tailored to the needs of the Haitian, Latino, and African-American students in Edison Senior High School in Miami. The program was led by Tina Bucuvalas, then Folklife curator for The Historical Association of Southern Florida and supported by grants from Arts in Education Program of the Florida Arts Council the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). In 1987, Bucuvalas wrote a teacher guide for a folk arts course and collaborated with teacher Connie Favret to create exercises aimed at elementary and secondary students; subsequently, Buculvalas and Favret conducted classroom sessions and teacher workshops. Materials include: program proposals, agreements, budgets, and correspondence; notes and evaluations; and photographic prints, as well as 35mm slides, and contact sheets.
Additional digital formats of audio, video, and image files available: Records were digitized 2015 – 2016. Users must contact staff ahead of visit for access.
This series documents field research on folk and traditional arts in the Florida Keys conducted during 1990 by Brent Cantrell and Robert Stone for the South Florida Folklife Program of the Historical Association of Southern Florida (now HistoryMiami Museum). The Keys’ geographical isolation and cultural mix of Anglo, Bahamian, and Cuban settlers combined to produce unique folkways, the oldest and most developed of which are often associated with maritime industries and occupations. Since the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Writer’s Project survey in the 1930s (see HMF9010 and HMF9000), only limited and sporadic efforts have been made to document Keys folklife. The project documented a wide variety of traditions, including: fishing, boat-building, quilt-making, sculpture, woodcarving, doll-making, and music. Materials include: field notes, surveys, and ephemera; reports and publications; photographic contact sheets, 35mm slides and negatives; audiocassette tape recordings of interviews, musical performances, and church services; and a videocassette tape of funeral bands in Key West.
Additional digital formats of audio and image files available: Records were digitized 2015 – 2016. Users must contact staff ahead of visit for access.
HistoryMiami’s South Florida Folklife Center (SFFC) carried out the Guayabera Preservation Initiative to collect, preserve, and increase public knowledge of the Guayabera, a traditional piece of menswear that is popular in Latin America and the Caribbean. The initiative resulted in the exhibition, “The Guayabera: A Shirt’s Story” at HistoryMiami Museum from June 28, 2012 to January 13, 2012 and an online exhibition found at www.historymiami.org/guayabera. The initiative also resulted in the creation of a Guayabera textile collection housed in HistoryMiami Museum’s object collection. This project was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and Cubavera.
Michael Knoll created the project and was lead researcher and curator. Jorge Zamanillo was the project photographer and conducted interviews. Antolin Garcia Carbonell helped with historical research and fieldwork.
This collection consists of born digital materials. Please contact staff ahead of your visit to access these materials.
Audio:
Files include WAV recordings and selected transcripts of interviews with Jose Ayuso, Ramon Aviles Gongora, Raul Armando Maglioni Montanez, Ciro Bianchi, Emiliano Nelson Guerra, Manuel Echevarria Gomez, Marta Veronica Vega, Tomas Canul, Nancy Pelegrin, Ricardo Selman, Silvia Mayra Gomez Farinas, and Piedad Subirats. These interviews were recorded in Merida, Mexico and Cuba during research tips in 2012.
Images:
Files include TIF, XMP, NEF, and JPEG images taken in Mexico in January 2012 and Cuba in February 2012. Shots include street scenes, photos of interviewees, businesses (former and current), sketches, old photographs, advertisements, and documentation of the process of making a Guayabera.
Exhibition:
Folder includes exhibition photos and design files such as text panels and reader rails.
Grant Documents:
Files include documents submitted for the National Endowment for the Arts grant application and reporting documents.
Videos:
Files include AVI videos of a folk dance troupe performing in the main plaza in Merida, Mexico in January 2012.
HistoryMiami’s South Florida Folklife Center (SFFC) carried out the Guayabera Preservation Initiative to collect, preserve and increase public knowledge of the guayabera, a traditional piece of menswear that is popular in Latin America and the Caribbean. The initiative resulted in the exhibition "Guayabera: A Shirt's Story" at HistoryMiami Museum from July 29, 2012 to January 13, 2013 and an online exhibition found at www.historymiami.org/guayabera.
This collection of electronic files includes research reference images; grant proprosals; audio-recorded interviews and their transcripts; images and videos taken during research trips to Merida, Mexico and Havana and Sancti Spiritus, Cuba; and exhibition files.
This series contains materials associated with a project in which photographers from the Iris PhotoCollective documented the South Florida Haitian community’s expressive traditions between 2006 and 2007. The collection of photographs produced by the project give special attention to traditional arts in the lives of individuals during religious and festive events, offering a view of Haitian life in South Florida that rarely represented in mass media coverage of the community. Among the traditions featured are fe koupe (steel drum sculpture), woodcarving, sewing, cooking, baking, drumming, dancing, singing, poetry, kite-making, and children’s games. Materials include: field notes and reports; photographic images; audiocassette tape and compact disc (CD) recordings of interviews with artists and experts by Joanne Hyppolite and Kiki Wainwright.
Additional digital formats of audio and image files available: Records were digitized 2015 – 2016. Users must contact staff ahead of visit for access.
The Harvest Festival was held annually at the Dade County Youth Fairground at Tamiami Park. Intended to acquaint South Floridians with local history and local traditional culture, the festival attracted a broad multi-ethnic, family-oriented audience. Between 1989 and 1993, the festival was sponsored by the Historical Association of Southern Florida (now HistoryMiami Museum), which organized presentations by folklorists and a broad range of local folk artists such as music performances, furniture- and doll-making demonstrations, and workshops on calligraphy. Materials include: information sheets; grant proposals, applications, and reports; photographic 35mm slides and contact sheets; and audiocassette tape recordings of promotional segments for radio broadcast.
Additional digital formats of audio and image files available: Records were digitized 2015 – 2016. Users must contact staff ahead of visit for access.
This series consists of documents related to a project in which a group of high school students of Indo-Caribbean descent living in South Florida conducted field work in their community using photography and video. Since the 1980s, thousands of East Indians from Trinidad, Guyana, Suriname, and Jamaica settled in South Florida. They continued to practice Indo-Caribbean cultural traditions, while also adjusting to an American way of life. Throughout 1999, ten high school students from the Indo-Caribbean community conducted a year-long project in collaboration with the Historical Museum of Southern Florida (now HistoryMiami Museum) and the Documentary Unit at the University of Miami to use photography and video, which co-produced the project. The students were taught how to use cameras and camcorders, they then documented cultural activities in their community with a focus on Hindu worship and celebrations. Events documented included puja worship services, weddings, interviews, and the Phagwa festival. The project was supported by a grant from the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Community Folklife Program. Materials include: grant-related documents including proposals and reports; photographic images; an audiocassette tape recording of the student’s responses to a rough cut of a documentary video; and videocassette tapes of original footage and a final version of a documentary based on the project in VHS and Betacam SP formats.
Additional digital formats of audio, image, and project report files available: Records were digitized 2015 – 2016. Users must contact staff ahead of visit for access.
This series consists of materials generated by a field research project to document local Jewish traditions conducted by the Historical Association of Southern Florida (now HistoryMiami Museum) during 1988 and 1989. South Florida is home to one of the largest Jewish communities in the United States. The 1985 Miami-Dade Folklife Survey by the Bureau of Florida Folklife Programs uncovered a number of Jewish folk artists in the Miami region. With funding support from the Florida Endowment for the Humanities (through the Florida Arts Council), the Association contracted Jan Rosenberg to more fully explore and document the Jewish traditions being practiced in South Florida. Folk artists engaged by the project included Uri Goldsmith, a scribe who produces ketubahs (Jewish marriage contracts). In 1989, Goldsmith was also featured in “Folk Arts in the Schools” program (HMF9005) and the Florida Folk Festival (see HMF9003). On July 30, 1989, the Museum hosted “A Collection of Jewish Traditional Arts,” a showcase for practicing folk artists identified by the project. Additionally, the Jewish folk arts identified through this project became an integral part of the “Tropical Traditions: The Folk Life of South Florida” exhibit in February 1990 (HMF9009). Materials include: grant applications, budgets, and reports; information sheets, research articles, and notes; audiocassette tape recordings and logs; photographic prints, as well as 35mm slides, and contact sheets; and audiocassette tape recordings of interviews, music and comedy performances, and recitations. Rosenberg also produced a summary report and an essay on Jewish folk culture in Dade and Broward counties which is included in the series.
Additional digital formats of audio and image files available: Records were digitized 2015 – 2016. Users must contact staff ahead of visit for access.
The Miami Street Culture Project was an initiative to document and present cultural traditions practiced in the streets of Miami. HistoryMiami’s South Florida Folklife Center conducted fieldwork to identify prominent artistic, communal, recreational, and occupational traditions practiced within Miami’s neighborhoods and produced an exhibition to share these traditions with the larger community. In addition to field research and an exhibition, the project includes an artifact collection, a printed publication, and cultural programming. The purpose of the project was to research and highlight street traditions that give the city its unique character and identity.
This series compiles materials from two related folklife projects during the mid- and late-1980s, the Miami-Dade Folk Arts survey and Palm Beach Folk Art in Education survey. During 1986 and 1987, The South Florida Folklife Center of The Historical Association of Southern Florida (now HistoryMiami Museum) conducted their second survey: a project to document folk arts in the Miami-Dade area and locate additional artists who might participate in the Traditions festival (HMF9004). Tina Bucuvalas conducted the fieldwork for this project, which received funding through a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grant to support both the Traditions Festival (HMF9004) and the Folk Arts in the Schools Program (HMF9005). During this same period, the Bureau of Florida Folklife Programs conducted a survey of Folk Art in Education in Palm Beach County. Jan Rosenberg conducted the fieldwork for this project, which generated information, photographic images, and other materialsfor the HistoryMiami Museum collection. Highlights include photographs of diverse folklife traditions such as Cretan music, Venezuelan kites, Miccosukee woodworking, and handmade lobster traps. Materials include: copies of research field notes and information sheets on informants; and photographic prints, as well as 35mm negatives, slides, and contact sheets.
Additional digital formats of audio, video, and image files available: Records were digitized 2015 – 2016. Users must contact staff ahead of visit for access.
This series documents a seminal effort to establish institutional folklife research in South Florida in the mid-1980s. In 1984, the Bureau of Florida Folklife Programs, the Dade County Council of the Arts and Sciences, and the Historical Association of Southern Florida (now HistoryMiami Museum) began a concerted effort to establish a folklife program in South Florida. In 1985, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) awarded the Bureau of Florida Folklife Programs a grant to conduct the first folklife survey of South Florida, the goal of which was to ascertain what expressive traditions were being practiced in South Florida’s diverse ethnic communities. The survey—conducted by Tina Bucuvalas, Nancy Nusz, and Laurie Sommers—documented a wide range of skills and art forms in local Haitian, Jamaican, Mexican, Bahamian, Cuban, and Jewish communities. Over the course of three months, the survey identified 200 folk artists in the Miami area. This initial effort provided the impetus for the creation of the South Florida Folklife Center at the Historical Museum of Southern Florida. Original materials from this project are held by the State Archives of Florida, including field notes, images, audiotapes, videotapes, and related media. Many of these items have been digitized and made available via the Florida Memory Project website (https://www.floridamemory.com).
HistoryMiamiThis series documents a field research project conducted by the Historical Museum (now HistoryMiami Museum) between 1990 and 1993 on the folk and artistic traditions practiced in the Nicaraguan communities of Miami-Dade County.
Subjects include: local religious and other festivals such as the Three Kings Parade, Fiesta de San Sebastian, and Purisima; folk music and dance; decorative arts; foodways; and other expressive traditions such as piñata-making. According to fieldworker Katherine Borland, the Nicaraguan community in Miami consists of three distinct culture groups, all of which are represented in the project: the Spanish-speaking Pacific Coast population; the southern Atlantic coast Creole English-speaking population; and the Atlantic coast Miskito population. Although they share some foodways, their cultural heritages are quite distinct, and the three groups have limited contact with each other. Materials also included folk music and dance, decorative arts, foodways, and other expressive traditions. The research culminated in the publication of a book, Nicaraguan Folklife in Miami, in both English and Spanish.
Materials include: research and field notes by fieldworkers Laurie Sommers and Katherine Borland; informant sheets and archive deposit agreements; reports, articles, and presentation materials in both English and Spanish, and ephemera; photographic prints, contact sheets, 35mm slides, negatives, and logs; audiocassette tape recordings of interviews, musical performances, religious services, and logs; and a copy of the book Nicaraguan Folklife in Miami.