Events

There’s always something exciting happening at the Museum of International Folk Art! Join us for our many programs listed below.

For the next thousand years: A presentation on crafting another world.
Lectures and Talks Featured Event

For the next thousand years: A presentation on crafting another world.

April 4, 2022
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

Join us for a virtual talk with Jenni Laiti, Saami artivist, Indigenous rights activist and duojár, traditional Saami craft maker.

 Register in advance for this meeting:

https://nmculture-org.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUudOioqD4rHdCVSL9Fs1Dj1kGQH2RzJihB

Jenni Unni Aili Laiti (1981) is a Saami artivist, Indigenous rights activist and duojár, traditional Saami craft maker. She is from Aanaar (Inari), Finnish side of Sápmi and lives now in Jåhkåmåhkke (Jokkmokk), Swedish side of Sápmi with her family. Her family belongs to the Sirges Saami reindeer herding community. Laiti is a part of Mihku´s family, who is known as great duodji masters.

Laiti has been active in Saami civil society since she was 16 years old. In recent years she has been organizing community resistance against mining projects in her hometown of Kallak/Gállok, advocating for climate justice in Sápmi, working with local Saami communities to build and strengthen Saami self-determination, and creating post-apocalyptic worlds-to-be. Laiti’s artivisim is guided by principles of anti-coloniality, Indigenous futurism, Saami traditional knowledge, as well as her love for her people and the land. She incorporates techniques derived from duodji (Saami art, craft, and design), culture jamming, community action, and performance art. Her vision is to live as part of a free Indigenous people. Her passion is justice—not just for her community—but for all of creation.

Photo credits: Jenni Laiti by Carl-Johan Utsi

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Ana Castillo Book Reading and Signing
Featured Event

Ana Castillo Book Reading and Signing

April 8, 2022
7:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Join us for this FREE event with Dr. Ana Castillo, an award-winning and best-selling author, poet, translator, and editor.

Her books include So Far from God, The Guardians, and Peel My Love like an Onion, in addition to her poetry collection , Ask the Impossible.   Dr. Castillo will be reading from her latest poetry collection, My Book of the Dead, followed by a book signing. 

This event is held in conjunction with The National Hispanic Cultural Center, and generously supported by AARP.

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Family Mornings At Folk Art
Workshop Family

Family Mornings At Folk Art

April 9, 2022
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

Join us at the museum on the Second Saturday of the Month for our Family Mornings at Folk Art program featuring storytime, art activity, and explorations in the galleries. FREE Family Program with Free museum admission included

  • April 9th -  Celebrate Earth Day with Recycled Instruments

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Expressing Norwegian and American Identities through Dress
Lectures and Talks Featured Event

Expressing Norwegian and American Identities through Dress

April 13, 2022
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM

A virtual talk with Luarann Gilbertson, Chief Curator at the Vesterheim Norwegian- American Museum.

Register in advance for this meeting: https://nmculture-org.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0rduyprj0vEtOxCNt-cAWpkwYFV9HMjSX7

Laurann Gilbertson received a BA in anthropology and an MS in textiles and clothing from Iowa State University. She is chief curator at Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum in Decorah, Iowa, and previously served as textile curator for 19 years. She is the author of essays that have appeared in Norwegian American Women: Migration, Communities, and Identities (2011), Anders Sandvig og Maihaugen (2012), and Encyclopedia of National Dress: Traditional Clothing around the World (2013) with Carol Colburn.

Dress helps us fashion identity, history, community, and place. Dress has been harnessed as a metaphor for both progress and stability, the exotic and the utopian, oppression and freedom, belonging and resistance. Dressing with Purpose examines three Scandinavian dress traditions—Swedish folkdräkt, Norwegian bunad, and Sámi gákti—and traces their development during two centuries of social and political change across northern Europe.

Learn more about the companion publication for Dressing with Purpose published by Indiana University Press: https://iupress.org/9780253058577/dressing-with-purpose/

 Photo credits: Laurann Gilbertson

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Mountain Witches Yamauba: enigmatic female in the mountains
Lectures and Talks Featured Event

Mountain Witches Yamauba: enigmatic female in the mountains

April 29, 2022
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM

Join us for a virtual talk with Noriko Tsunoda Reider, Professor of Japanese at Miami University of Ohio in the Department of German, Russian, Asian, and Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures.

Register in advance for this meeting: https://nmculture-org.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZctcuyrqjorG9Sr8V9iaevPQherbuvMBGZR

 After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Dr. Noriko Reider’s research interest is the supernatural in Japanese literature, folklore, and art. She has published Mountain Witches: Yamauba (Utah State University Press, 2021), Seven Demon Stories from Medieval Japan (2016), Japanese Demon Lore: Oni, from Ancient Times to the Present (2010), Tales of the Supernatural in Early Modern Japan (2002), and many articles.

Image credits:  Yamauba” from National Diet Library Digital Collections

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