John Michael Vlach (1948–2022)

Fresh out of the gate, John launched into a major exhibition and book for the Cleveland Museum of Art titled The Afro-American Tradition in Decorative Arts (1978) with examples of historic buildings, pottery, basketry, and metalwork. Emerging in his impressive body of material culture studies was a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	The Journal of American folklore 2023-07, Vol.136 (541), p.322-325
Main Author:	Bronner, Simon J.
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	African Americans Anthropology Art galleries & museums Childrens picture books Culture Diaspora Educational activities Ethnic Studies Field study Folk art Folklore Folklorists Historic preservation Material culture Slavery Study abroad Vernacular architecture
Online Access:	Get full text
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Summary:	Fresh out of the gate, John launched into a major exhibition and book for the Cleveland Museum of Art titled The Afro-American Tradition in Decorative Arts (1978) with examples of historic buildings, pottery, basketry, and metalwork. Emerging in his impressive body of material culture studies was a social ecological approach that—more than reconstructing a historic-geographic genealogy of house and craft types, as was current in scholarship then—documented and analyzed the social and material connections of residents with special attention to racial and ethnic inequities and the ways that these relationships were enacted and influenced by physical surroundings. John's work on folk art included the reinterpretation of early American painting in Plain Painters: Making Sense of American Folk Art (1988). In this controversial book, John dauntlessly took on the art world that was stuck on aesthetic, class-based definitions of folk art, in another broad revisionist project to theorize the folkloristic criteria of community and tradition in folk art.
ISSN:	0021-8715 1535-1882