True Texas Collection: Folk and Traditional Arts from the Concho Valley to the Rio Grande Is Now Online

A field survey of folk and traditional artists in a target area that extends from the Concho Valley centered around San Angelo in West Central Texas to the Rio Grande River in South Texas was carried out in 2020 and 2022. Given that such a survey had never been conducted in this region before, the resulting two-phased field discovery process revealed a wealth of folk and traditional artists working in many genres—from saddle makers to silversmiths, from assorted quilting circles to Catrina paper artists, and to one lone artisan spinning wheel maker. The results of the survey also led to two gallery exhibitions at the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts (SAMFA) featuring 43 artists and groups selected to participate.

Principals on the initiative included Howard Taylor, director of SAMFA, who, despite his position managing a fine arts museum, agreed to undertake the project. Two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, along with additional funding solicited from state and local sponsors, underwrote the project. The exhibitions at the museum were curated by Laura Huckaby, Curator of Collections and Exhibitions at the museum.

Douglas Manger, independent folklorist at HeritageWorks and longtime AFS member, carried out the fieldwork. Mr. Manger also produced the two exhibition booklets and assisted with video production. Locating an archive for this collection of photographs and oral histories resulted in an agreement between HeritageWorks, SAMFA, and Angelo State University’s West Texas Collection. Beginning in 2023, working with her support staff, Shannon Sturm, Associate Director for Special Collections at the West Texas Collection, began overseeing the creation of a digital repository for these materials. From Manger’s initial query letter to Howard Taylor to the completion of the archiving process this year, the initiative has been nine years in the making.

Named officially as True Texas Collection: Folk and Traditional Arts from the Concho Valley to the Rio Grande, the materials can now be accessed through Angelo State University’s online depository.