Scope and Content
Collection of manuscripts, sound recordings, graphic materials, moving images and artifacts representing the life work of folk arts administrator, folklorist, filmmaker, musician, and teacher Bess Lomax Hawes. The bulk of the collection materials date from 1960 through 2000 and document Hawes’s work as a professor in the anthropology department at San Fernando Valley State College, as a coordinator for the Smithsonian Institution’s Festival of American Folklife, and as the first head of the National Endowment for the Arts Folk Arts Program. The collection also includes documentation of Hawes’s family life and work as a musician and teacher.
Formats include correspondence, writings and speeches, musical transcriptions, school records, memos, business records, reports, teaching materials, travel documentation, field and research notes, clippings, awards, sound recordings, moving images, photographs, and artwork.