Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T03:24:40.045Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Libraries and folk art

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2016

Eske Mathiesen*
Affiliation:
Danish Folklore Society
Get access

Abstract

Folk art is widely supposed to have come to an end with the coming of urban, industrial society, but activities persist which may be termed ‘folk art’ and which include, for instance, ‘family art’ — the creating, by a family, of its own visual surroundings and traditions. Folk art is a people’s art; it affirms and renews personal, local, and community experience; it is a shared activity which does not elevate the role of the ‘artist’. But libraries by and large document fine art, and thus, at least by implication, are associated with its values and appear to have nothing to contribute to the kind of social change which may be necessary if people’s art is to flourish.

The text of a paper delivered to art librarian members of the Danish Library Association in November 1972, published in Bibliotek 70, no. 2, 1973, pp. 31-34, and now published for the first time in English.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Art Libraries Society 1981

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)