History of the TAP

Starting Out... The Traditional Arts Program came into being in 1983, thanks to the efforts of Dr. Robert Sayers, then Acting Chair of the Department of Anthropology. Dr. Sayers envisioned a weekly series of ethnic art presentations for museum visitors and applied to the National Endowment for the Arts for start-up funding. The NEA awarded the Academy a matching grant of $15,000 to fund performers’ fees and the coordinator’s part-time salary, for a total one-year budget of $37,000. June Anderson was hired in July 1983 to organize the fledgling program, which debuted on September 10, 1983, with a performance of African dance.

The goal of the TAP was to expand the Academy’s outreach into local ethnic communities by offering artists the chance to participate in a variety of cultural heritage presentations -- music and dance performances, craft and food demonstrations, storytelling, puppet shows, and other expressions of daily and ceremonial life. The TAP was modelled after its precursor—the Living Arts Program, which ran from 1976 to 1980, also with NEA support. Coordinated by Dr. Sandy Smith, the Living Arts Program was discontinued after the four-year granting period, and Dr. Sayers planned to reinstate it.

By the end of its first year, the TAP was firmly established and had built up a regular audience of enthusiastic aficionados. Museum-goers welcomed the opportunity to learn about the artistic heritage of the many immigrant and Native American groups that make up the demographic profile of the San Francisco Bay Area, and participating artists appreciated having a public venue for interpreting their traditions. The ongoing Saturday afternoon programs proved to be both educational and entertaining. At times, the art programs tied in with the themes of museum exhibits, or were scheduled to coincide with an annual celebration, such as Mexican Cinco de Mayo or Chinese New Year.

Education, Documentation & Staffing... Initially, the format of the TAP was merely a weekly series of ethnic art presentations for museum visitors. It soon became obvious, however, that members of the audience were eager to expand their understanding of each art form in its broader cultural context. We introduced audience handouts to explain the social significance and function of the art, as well as its historical and geographical origin, and included biographies of the artists and general information on the ethnic group featured each week. In addition to the research required for each presentation, we also made a commitment to conduct ongoing fieldwork within local ethnic neighborhoods, and to augment our knowledge of cultural traditions by documenting every Saturday presentation, through tape recordings, transcripts, and slide photography. This was the beginning of the TAP archives, the foundation on which our ethnographic files have continued to grow over the years. Today the archives provide an invaluable resource to individuals or institutions seeking information on California’s ethnic diversity.

Because documentation is labor-intensive, we enlisted the help of volunteers to transcribe audiotapes and to help with fieldwork and research. Diane Butler, Chair of the Academy’s Docent and Volunteers Department, provided the necessary support to our endeavors. The TAP was also fortunate to enlist the services of San Francisco film-maker Sally Gati who, from the very beginning, attended each public presentation to photograph the proceedings. Sally’s slide documentation formed the basis of our now-substantial photographic collection. These slides, which cover an enormous range of traditional arts, are available on loan to researchers and lecturers, or for a user-fee for publications.

From the start, museum staff were keen to gauge public response to the Academy’s ethnic presentations. During the first year we distributed evaluation forms to members of the audience for feedback. Thus we were able to ascertain visitors’ expectations, elicit criticism, and gather suggestions for future programs. We also encouraged audience participation, through question-and-answer dialogues with the artists and through hands-on activities. Both were an effective means of cross-cultural exchange.

Program Endowment & Development... In 1984, when the one-year trial period was over, it was time to assess the program’s achievements and determine its future. It was apparent that the program had contributed to the Academy’s educational mission—“to explore and explain the natural world,” including human cultures—and we resolved to seek private funding to ensure the continuation of the TAP, since internal funds were not available and the NEA would not extend its grant for a second year. Local philanthropist Mrs. Phyllis Wattis, a long-time patron of the Academy, offered to finance the TAP on a year-by-year basis, thus saving the program from extinction.

Mrs. Wattis providing annual funding for four years, from 1984 to 1988, and then, in a truly magnanimous gesture, decided to permanently fund the TAP with a one-million-dollar endowment, awarded in September 1988. Our financial worries over, we could now focus on expanding the program in new directions. We introduced a student internship program and our first intern, Beth Gerrard, from Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, joined the Department of Anthropology in 1988 for a three-month internship. This was the beginning of a very worthwhile and successful partnership with universities in California and across the country. The Internship Program has also attracted participants from around the globe, including students from Russia, England, Singapore, and Denmark. Over the years, student projects have contributed much to our knowledge of ethnic arts, while interns have gained practical experience in applied anthropology and museum studies, and obtained course credit towards their degrees.

In 1991 we added another component to the TAP, an Artists-in-Residence program. Thanks to a $12,000 grant from the Institute of Museum Services, we augmented the Saturday presentations with a three-month series of residencies whereby guest artists demonstrated their crafts daily in the museum,. The grant covered airfares and accommodations, enabling us to seek artists from outside the Bay Area. Anne Ehlers, a Chilkat blanket weaver from Alaska, was our first out-of-state visitor, followed by Turkish carpet-weavers; the latter returned to the museum every November over a seven-year period. Residencies remain a popular attraction with museum visitors.

In 1993 we procured a grant from the Irvine Foundation, distributed through the Fund for Folk Culture, to compile a directory of ethnic organizations in the Bay Area. Through our fieldwork in the community we had compiled a list of ethnic resources to help us develop programs and to foster our community outreach endeavors. Now it was time to collate this material into a useful document. We hired Karin Kamb, a graduate student in anthropology at San Francisco State University, to produce the Directory, which we later published. The book has been in great demand by other institutions in the Bay Area, and sales have flourished. Updated on a regular basis, the Directory will soon be available in a database format. Dr. Nancy Olsen, from the University of New Mexico, joins us in January 2001 to work on this project.

Many other TAP projects have been funded by grants from private or corporate sources. In the 1990s, a second IMS grant of $16,000 allowed us to develop teaching kits on folk art topics; an LEF Foundation grant helped to bring Hopi and Navajo artists from Arizona to the museum for craft demonstrations; and a Ford Corporation grant supported African art programs. Additionally, Friends of Ethnic Art in San Francisco funded travel expenses for staff fieldwork in Turkey. Since 1996, local businessman Don Levy has made it possible for Moana’s Hula Halau from Moloka’i, Hawaii, to visit the Academy for an annual performance. Mr. Levy has financed air airfares, accommodations, and meals for the group of about 50 members. Such beneficence is rare indeed.

New Projects & Staff... By the mid-1990s, the TAP was expanding rapidly with a host of new projects. Our fieldwork and research also intensified, now extending beyond California to include studies in Ecuador, Turkey, Australia, and Guatemala. The workload demanded a permanent addition to the staff, and a new position was created in 1995. June Anderson became the new Traditional Arts Supervisor, to oversee the program and to produce publications on ethnic art, and Karin Kamb accepted the position of TAP Coordinator responsible for the performance series. Karin infused the program with fresh ideas, while competently and conscientiously managing day-to-day operations. She also followed her own academic pursuits, conducting fieldwork with Hmong communities in California’s Central Valley.

In 1997, Almudena Ortiz (MA in Folklore, UCB) replaced Ms. Kamb. Bringing enthusiasm and energy to her work, Almudena coordinated the program for two years before returning to a career in documentary photography and teaching. In 1999, Dr. Jennifer Michael joined the TAP staff as a part-time researcher and program coordinator, deftly juggling her duties at the Academy with her teaching appointments at the University of California at Berkeley.

One of the challenges we undertook in the 1990s was to make the extensive resources of the TAP accessible to a wider audience through the Internet. In 1997, we hired Karla Wesley, a graduate student in anthropology at the University of Alabama, to design a web site for the TAP. Karla worked diligently for six months to produce our first web pages. Later, as technology advanced, Jenny Michael updated the original web site. Jenny’s ultimate goal is to make our entire archive of folk art material dating back to 1983 available online.

Acknowledgments... Over the TAP’s twenty-year history, one continuous thread binds the program together conceptually: a deep concern with people and their interactions—people passing on their traditions to the next generation, people from diverse ethnic backgrounds co-existing in our multicultural society, people visiting the museum and meeting the artists. And students, volunteers, donors, and staff, working together and contributing to the growth of the TAP. This is the program’s strength—the Traditional Arts Program thrives on team effort, and brings together people who share a common interest in cultural conservation.

The Academy is indebted to the NEA for its initial support of the TAP, which allowed the program to develop and flourish. Since its humble beginnings in 1983, the TAP has grown from a weekly performance series to a fully-fledged ethnographic research program firmly grounded in academic theories and methodologies. Staff and student interns conduct fieldwork worldwide, publish their findings, attend scholarly conferences, give lectures on their work, lead educational tours abroad, and teach university courses. The ultimate success and survival of the TAP was made possible by the generosity of one woman, and we thank Mrs. Phyllis Wattis for believing that the work we do contributes to the larger picture of anthropological enquiry. We eagerly anticipate many more years of ethnographic programming ahead of us!

—June Anderson, December 2000