Episode 6: Michael Bramwell

Interactive Transcript

Speaker A This is Breaking the Frame, a podcast.

Speaker B Featuring interviews that explore how museums and the people who work in them shape American history and culture, past and present. I'm Ruthie Dibble, the Robert N. Shapiro Curator of American Decorative Art at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.

Speaker A And I'm Emily Casey Hall, Assistant professor of American Art and Culture at the University of Kansas.

Speaker B Our guest today is Michael Bramwell, who is the Joyce Lind Curator of Folk and Self Taught Art at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Michael is the second curator we've interviewed from the MFA for this season. The other will be Lucia Abramovich Sanchez. But when we were planning the first season, Emily and I agreed that we also needed to have Michael as a guest. Michael's journey to becoming a curator and his specialty in folk and outsider art are both unusual and mean. He has an important and distinctive perspective on curating American art.

Speaker A So, Michael, thank you so much for joining us today for this conversation. And I'd like to start by asking you to introduce yourself and tell our listeners what you do.

Speaker C Thank you first of all, for having me for this podcast. I think it's a very important outlet for the public to understand what, not only what curators do, but to the field of American art. My name is Michael Bramwell. I'm the Joyce Lindy Curator of Folk and Self Taught Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. And my role essentially is to put forward the Folk Art Initiative here at the mfa. And what that means essentially is bringing the work into the collection, developing exhibitions around this genre, and exposing the public to what we do here and how this art is just as important as other genres of art as well. So that's basically my mission in a nutshell.

Speaker A Thank you for explaining some of those ideas and themes. And we're going to be unpacking some of the terms and artists and kinds of objects related to your curatorial practice over the course of the conversation. And Michael, I wanted to share with you that Nathan Osborne and Rayna Mallory, two of the graduate students from my Museums in America class, helped to prep for this interview. We're really grateful for their work. Raina is here today as is our graduate production assistant, the peerless Cat White. So, Raina and Kat, can you say hello and introduce yourselves?

Speaker B Hi.

Speaker D So I am Raina Mallory and I am completing my first year of my MA here at the University of Kansas. I and I'm super excited to hear the rest of this podcast.

Speaker E And I'm Kat White. As mentioned, I'm the production assistant for the show and I'm a PhD candidate here at KU. So really looking forward to our conversation.

Speaker A Today, and Raina and Kat will be asking some of the questions.

Speaker B So, Michael, we have a three part approach in our interviews. We're going to start with questions about your origins and where you came from as a scholar and a curator. And then we're going to spend time talking about some of your current projects, projects and intellectual engagements. And then we'll wrap up with a lightning round and a few concluding questions about where you see yourself in the next few years.

Speaker A So the first of those questions is going to be asked by Raina.

Speaker B Raina, take it away.

Speaker D So you have a varied career as an artist, scholar, and curator. Can you take us back to a moment in your life when you decided that you wanted to be a museum curator? How did you come up with that decision and why?

Speaker C That's a very interesting question, and it implies that there was an intentionality. Oftentimes things happen just in the course of being engaged with art, and then it comes out in various ways. So I mean, by that, I've been an artist for over 25 years and never saw myself as a museum curator, although I was very much involved with curators from the artistic side. I had to present work for exhibition. So I understood how they thought. I understood, you know, their considerations in selecting work and putting it on the wall. And so I understood it from that side. It's just flipped now. Artists approach me with work, and I think I sort of have a little unique perspective because I understand what it takes to produce a piece of work, and I understand work that's serious and it deserves to be in a museum. So I'm just on the side now of selecting that work to come in. But it's sort of different side of the same coin. Art, artist, curator, and I think one practice informs another.

Speaker A Do you think that there was a sort of a moment in your career where you kind of really realized that you were making that transition, that flip that you're describing from engaging with the art world and museums from one way to another, or did that sort of happen organically where suddenly you woke up and realized that you were a curator and you were at the mfa? Boston.

Speaker C Now, that's a very interesting question, because it really happened, and I actually can date it when it happened. I was in the woods of South Carolina, walking through a kiln site looking for shards for the Hear Me now exhibition that was recently at the mfa. It began at the Met, went to the mfa, and then eventually went to the High Museum but to answer your question, I think it was like maybe 98 degrees, almost 100 degrees, and we were sweating and we were walking through these. This. I call it a plantation, because really what it was was a pottery plantation. And I realized that the work that I was doing was going to eventually be part of an exhibition. And that's when I realized that, hey, what I'm actually doing is curating this experience for myself first, but then I was going to ultimately curate it for an audience when it arrived at the museum. So that's one of the times I actually realized that what I was doing was directly translating into a palpable exhibition at a museum.

Speaker B So, yeah, yeah.

Speaker A So, Michael, you're referring to this really stunning exhibition called Hear Me the Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina, that opened in 2023 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and then traveled to MFA Boston, as well as other stops in the United States. You were one of the curators who was involved in the show, and you also wrote for its catalog, which is really incred as well. And the show focused on the work of African American potters in the 19th century American south, and particularly those from Edgefield county, which was a center of stoneware production in the decades before the Civil War. And I think one really special aspect of the show was it brought together from museums and private collections across the country several monumental stoneware storage jars made by David Drake, who was an enslaved man and skilled potter. And Dave's jars are significant because he both signed them with his name and also wrote poems on their sides, which give us insight into his own experience in this period as an individual person as well as an artisan. And I think the story you tell about this research you were doing in the woods of South Carolina is so great because it's a great reminder that the work of curators takes many forms, and it's work that's happening outside of the museum as much as in the museum's galleries. I think all of that field work, in the case of what you're describing, you know, literally being in the woods, in the out of doors, doing that research, is not something that visitors are always aware of when they see the kind of finished, polished exhibitions in the gallery space of the museum.

Speaker C That's exactly right. And it was not only the field work component literally being in the woods, but it was also the realization that I needed to interact with collectors, people that had already realized the value of David Drake's ceramic wares and had collected them. And so it was a matter of interacting with them and convincing them that the exhibition was worthy of their loans and so forth. So it was the practical field work and it was the interaction with the collectors and dealers and other institutions that all sort of brought it together. And so that work really informed my understanding of what part of what curatorial practice had to be in order to be effective.

Speaker B And Michael, speaking of the market and dealers and collectors, in your title, you have these terms, folk and self taught art, and we wondered if you could speak to what they mean to you and how did you engage with those terms in your position?

Speaker C Now, that's a really timely question, ruthie, because on May 23rd, we're going to be having a symposium at the museum called New Discourses on Folk and Self Taught Art. And the purpose of that symposium is to begin to figure out what folk and self taught art is supposed to look like in the 21st century. Those words like folk and self taught art are problematic terms and have been problematic terms that marginalize not only the artists, but marginalize this art. And they carry a lot of baggage with them. I'll give you a brief story. I was interacting with a foundation, a contemporary art foundation I won't mention, to borrow some of their work. And we were engaged in really productive, positive conversations. And then all of a sudden, after maybe two months of conversation, they literally stopped returning my phone calls. And I was like, wow, that's unprofessional. And so I had a friend who, who works there, and she intimated to me, she said they dropped the project because they didn't want their contemporary art associated with folk and self taught art. It devalued it. And that was like a aha moment where I realized that the terms themselves carry this negative connotation, whether you call it folky, whether you call it self taught, which essentially means that you haven't been to school or you lack academic training. So in effect, you don't know what you're really doing. And so what this symposium is going to do is bring together four important people that will begin to address and unpack this notion of what folk and self taught art can be. And the way we're approaching it is we're bringing together a scholar, Dr. Gabrielle Berlinger, who is an ethnographer and she is American Studies scholar. And she's going to look at it from how academics need to write about it. And really, it's about canon formation. How do we position it within the canon on equal status? We're bringing in Jorie Finkel, who is a writer for the New York Times. And she's going to look at it from a critical perspective. How do art critics write about this genre for the public? Because those are the public facing. When you read about folk and self targeted art in the paper, it's the critic that writes the reviews of the exhibition or it's the critic that writes about the genre itself. So we need that, that critics perspective. Then we're bringing in Kinkasha Conwell, who she's emeritus now and she is the, or was, I should say the deputy director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which is a Smithsonian institution for over 35 years. So she's going to speak about it from an institutional perspective, how to bring this work into a wider dialogue with other forms of art. And then lastly, we actually have a folk and self taught artist, quote Lonnie Holly, who will talk about how he wants to be referred to. And it's interesting in discussions with him, he doesn't consider himself a focused self taught artist. He considers himself an American artist. And it's this kind of new dialogue that needs to happen that will, I think, improve the public perception and reception of this genre.

Speaker B Well, I'm really glad to hear about that event. It sounds like a good grouping of people. The terms are so difficult, I can never decide which bothers me more. But self taught, it's like, what about the parents? I don't like the way it erases the teachings that we all experience outside of academic environments. So I'm excited to see what comes of that event.

Speaker C Yes, yes.

Speaker A And following on that, you've just been talking about some of the work you're doing in terms of public programs and bringing scholars and artists together to consider ideas and issues around the work that you do. And I'm going to now ask you a little bit about some other ways that you're engaging with that in your role. So you're the inaugural curator of folk and Self taught Art at the mfa. Can you tell us a bit about the history of collecting in this category at the mfa? Were works that sort of fall under this umbrella already in or coming into the collection at the MFA prior to your revival? And then what kind of key acquisitions are you hoping to make to continue to develop and shape the the collection?

Speaker C Let's talk about the historical aspects first and then work our way up. So I, I'm really happy to be working at the MFA and holding this inaugural position because I did not have to develop an interest institutionally. It was already there. They acknowledged the importance of this genre and that's why my position was endowed, in order to bring a certain respectability, if you will, being able to curate exhibitions on the same level as other genres of art. So right away, you know, my road, if you will, was, was paid for me. And so that was a great, great opportunity now to put works forward that I wouldn't have to struggle. When I. When I make a recommendation, for example, for an acquisition or I propose an exhibition, I don't have to fight as hard because everyone gets it. I shouldn't say everyone, but a large portion of the museum gets it and they're willing to support it. In terms of what I've been doing, in terms of my role, I am interested in bringing this genre into the collection and that's in terms of contemporary, folk and self taught art. But I walked into a wonderful historical collection called the Carolet Collection. And this is essentially a 19th century collection of paintings, drawings and sculptures. Rich, rich and very encyclopedically deep. But with any collection, there are always sort of gaps, right? And the gaps in this collection have to do with diversity, equity and inclusion. It's essentially white, it's essentially male, and it's essentially New England. Right. No art from the African American South. Very few women artists. And so that's not to say that the collection isn't rich. It's extremely rich. So what we want to do is not get rid of, you know, we don't want to have sort of an iconoclastic gesture and just say, oh, forget about those old things. Let's forget about the weather vanes and let's forget about the duck decoys and let's forget about the carousel figures. No, all of that stuff is really deep. But what we can do now is supplement it to create a more diverse and a more inclusive collection. And to that end, we've been able to acquire through acquisition a lot of works since I've been here. As a matter of fact, I gave a lecture just before coming on this podcast about a work we acquired by Beverly Buchanan called Four Shacks in the Neighborhood. And it's a great piece and she exemplifies exactly what we're trying to go for. She was trained at Columbia as a public health worker. Right. And would go into the backwoods of Georgia to work with her clients. And she didn't consider herself an artist at all. But when she came home in the evening, she would sketch the houses that she visited. Right. And didn't know what she was doing was art. And then she began making sculptures of those same houses. Didn't know what she was doing was art. And then by chance, she came back to New York and went to the Art Students League where she met Romia Bearden and Norman Lewis, who pointed out to her, wait a minute, what you're really doing is sculpture. What you're really doing is drawing. And then it gelled for her what she was doing. So we just brought her into the collection. We brought in work by Sam Doyle, we've brought in work by contemporary artists who work in the same way as folk and self taught artists work. In other words, the found object assemblages, working with non traditional art materials, looking at the spiritual impulses in art. All of these things work across genres, whether it's contemporary or it's traditional. And so it's my job to see that connection that has absolutely nothing to do with whether you were academically trained or not. It has to do with your sensibilities. It has to do with what motivates you. It has to do with how you tap into creativity, how you're able to articulate the same concerns that have nothing to do with your schooling or your background. So those are some of the things that I've been trying to do since coming into the position.

Speaker B So, Michael, building off of that, we wanted to read a quote from your recent essay, which is titled Heard a Voice, Saw a Light Spiritual Implications of Creative Belief in Black Vernacular Art. So we pulled from there this couple sentences that we thought were really interesting. You write, we are witnessing an important moment in American cultural history as black vernacular art makes its way out of the bayous and big bottoms of Southern experience and into formal institutions and canons of contemporary art. But it is important to ensure that during this fanfare we acknowledge and distinguish the spiritual dimension of this art from secular forms of creative expressions. So we wanted to ask you at the mfa, it seems like you're not just witnessing this sea change, you're participating in it. And we're wondering, why is it important to collect Southern art at a New England institution? And what kinds of connections do you see between Southern black folk art and MFA audiences?

Speaker C Well, there's. There's definitely a connection because I was just down in North Carolina researching an exhibition on Minnie Evans, which I'll be bringing here in 2025. And it's interesting because she's from North Carolina and was working there all her life, and New England audiences don't know about her. So it's just a matter. Everyone's open to it. If you show them what it is that she's done, the beautiful work that she's produced and the history and the stories behind her art. Just as an aside, she worked for 35 years in a little house outside of a place called Airlie Gardens. This was sort of like a botanical gardens that you would pay and go in and enjoy the day. And while she was collecting her tickets, and mind you, I said 35 years collecting her tickets, she had a side hustle. She would do drawings in her little, little ticket booth, and when she sold the ticket to the garden, she would try to sell drawing as well. And this is how she, I guess, supplemented her income. But there's thousands and thousands of these rich drawings that have been collected by the Cameron Art Museum that owns her estate now, and many, many other private collectors that I met. Because once you meet one, one tells you about someone else and the next one tells you about someone else. Someone else. And just the other day I was on the phone with a filmmaker who is just finishing up a film on Mini. So this promises to be a great exhibition. But just to answer your question more specifically, Ruthie, I think art from the African American south has been coming out a lot since the Souls Grown Deep foundation. And the Art Transfer program has positioned this art in major museums from the Met to the Whitney to MFA Boston. We've gotten so many wonderful quilts like from Gee's Ben and so forth. So the audience is already primed for it. So it's just a matter of, hey, here's another artist you might not have known about.

Speaker B You know, Michael, you're right. The Souls Grown Deep foundation is an incredible resource for our listeners. It's a foundation dedicated to promoting the work of black artists from the American south as well as their communities. And since around 2014, the foundation has been distributing its collection to museums in the United States. So really seeding museums all over, especially in the north, with really beautiful and lesser known works by black Southern artists. They focus on 20th century artists, many of whom are still living. And among those artists are the quilters of She's Been who you just mentioned black women artists like Mary Lee Bendoff and Lorettes Pettaway, who are known for their abstract works of quilted art. And you could find out more about both in our show notes.

Speaker A I'm curious. You a little bit ago were talking about this kind of key moment in your formation when you were collecting pot shards that became part of this exhibition that you mentioned, Hear me Now, which is a major exhibition about the work of enslaved African American craftspeople in the 19th century. And that's Something that you have yourself done a lot of research on. You contributed to that exhibition and have written about David Drake, one of the most well known enslaved black potters from this period, as well as other individuals like Thomas Kamara, who is an earlier free black businessman from the early 19th century. So there's this aspect of your research and work that's focused on historic craft objects, art made by people of color in the United States. And I'm wondering how, what connections you see between that area of your research and work and this collecting that you've been describing that's really focused on artists of the 20th century. Is there a relationship between those two? And are you also looking at collecting historic 19th century material that has maybe not been considered within this canon as well into the museum?

Speaker C That's a rich question. I love it. Yes. So my methodology in terms of curation is what I call trans historical, meaning that what I try to do is make the connections between earlier work, let's say, from the 19th century. And what would that have to do with work from the 21st century and through the curatorial practice, sort of bridge those. Those connections. Because I think it was John Henry Clark that said history is always a current affair, meaning that what happens five minutes from now has to do with. Happen years ago. It's, you know, history is cyclical. It's just not this linear, this linear process. So what I'm trying to do is recognize those. Those synergies and those connections and let them come out in exhibitions or let them come out in scholarship also. It's interesting. I was looking at a Comrade jar for acquisition the other day. It was at auction, and it was just a great opportunity to. I really wanted it, to put it together with our Drake Jar, our David Drake Jar. Because here you have two different artists, one from New York City. Right. And one from South Carolina. They were geographically separated, but they were working in similar ways and affected by similar circumstances. So I guess to round out the question, I'd see connections between old stuff and I see connections with contemporary things, and I try to bring them together in the acquisitions I make and as well as the exhibitions I curate.

Speaker B Michael, I'm thinking about your point about trans historical connections and this quote, thinking about spirituality. Like, I know that that's an interest of yours and that part of your work is to be bringing to the museum visitor this sense of the spirituality of certain works of art. What are the strategies that you employ to kind of highlight that spiritual quality of objects in a museum?

Speaker C Recently I did a lecture called the Devens lecture and what it basically had to do with was looking at the ways in which spirituality animates and goes through much of folk and self taught art, whether it's seeing visions or hearing voices, all of this has a spiritual root to it. And even with Thomas Comarer, if you think about it, we know him from decorative arts, right? He produced these wonderful ceramic pots. But if you just take, you know, move away from the object centered approach and look at it from an object driven approach, much of what he was about was spirituality, right? He, even when he went back to Africa with the Colonization society, it wasn't just to relocate and find a way to get away from, you know, the negative social situation in the United States. He was going there to proselytize the gospel, if you will, on the African continent. So whether you're talking about Komara, whether you're talking about David Drake, who has written on his pots, repent or you will be lost. That's a spiritual concept, right? So you see it in Komora, you see it in Drake, you see it in Minnie Evans, who is famously quoted as saying, God told her to draw or die, right? It animates the whole genre. And the lecture was about identifying that in everyone from Howard Finster to who, who was the Baptist preacher as well as an artist. And, and most of his art was about proselytizing. He just said, if people like my art and they buy my art, then when they buy it, I can write these quotes on it, these biblical quotes, and then they've heard the gospel quote, unquote. So I think to answer your question about spirituality, that's a central feature that I try to draw out of these artists rather than, you know, simply talk about, oh, look, you know, this is a wonderful jug that, that David Drake made. And it is, and don't get me wrong, but there was a deeper concern that I think we miss when we take this object centered approach and don't look at the context in which it was produced.

Speaker A Do you feel like the museum is an effective environment to tell those stories or to explore those dimensions of artists and art objects? You know, it strikes me that very often religion and spirituality is something that is de. Emphasized in the interpretation of art in museums, even as, you know, if you stroll through the European, medieval and Renaissance galleries, you're going to see a lot of religious art. But in terms of how we talk about art in museum spaces. So I'm wondering if that's something that you see challenges or opportunities in terms of telling those stories in a, in A museum space.

Speaker C I love that question because it implies the secular nature of museum spaces and the art world in general, I think. But I think the museum is a great place to tell those stories. And the reason I say that is because what's already baked in to the museum is this notion of quiet, meditative reverence, Right. That's already built in. When you stand before work of art, you're sort of. You're not chatting, you're just really, like, looking and saying, oh, how beautiful. And one of the things that Ludwig Wittgenstein said, the famous German philosopher, is that there's no difference between ethics and aesthetics. Right? They're one in the same. And so when you stand in a museum, you're already in this quasi reverend posture before works of art, so you're open and you're susceptible to this higher, I guess, form of consciousness anyway, because you've come to the museum to contemplate these aesthetics, these wonderful aesthetics. And so it's a great opportunity not to proselytize. This is not church. Right to. This is a cultural institution. But to the extent that we want people to understand what animates these artists, it's important to tell that story. Now, if we want to hear it in pure form, we would go to church. But if we want to hear it in cultural form, then. Then we need to. We need to talk about it in terms of how aesthetics can, you know, raise our consciousness and get us to begin to consider things that we don't consider in our everyday life because we're too busy catching the train and catching the bus or going to school or teaching a class or all of the things that we do in our lives. But when we take time out, you know, when we pause and come to a museum, it's sort of. It's analogous to pausing and going to church on Sunday. It's like stopping our daily routine to do something higher, if you will. So I think it creates a great space to tell those spiritual stories, thinking.

Speaker B About these spaces and how people experience them. We have a series of lightning round questions about curatorial work that we're going to have Kat and Raina ask you. So it should be just like what comes to mind first. Don't think too hard about it.

Speaker C Just like free association.

Speaker B Yeah, exactly. Yes. Kat, do you want to take it away? Yes.

Speaker E So, first, what are three words that describe your ideal museum label?

Speaker C The only thought to liberate the mind is the one that leaves it alone.

Speaker B Okay. We'll just let that sink in. Let it settle in the. Yeah.

Speaker D I appreciate the free association. So for the next question, it's what is a dream acquisition for you at the MFA Boston.

Speaker C Joseph Yocum.

Speaker B Michael, can you introduce us briefly to the life and art of Joseph Yocum?

Speaker C Joseph Yoakum was an interesting character I can't go too deeply into, but I can describe his work to you. Yeah, he did these fanciful landscapes. And what he claims is that. And again, I'm not here to judge one way or another, but what he claims is that he's visited all of these landscapes that he's drawn. And the closest we can come to whether that's accurate is that he used to work for the circus and he traveled with the circus. But just the extent of his drawings, there's no way he could have visited all, all of those landscapes. But I'm not going to be a detractor. I'm just saying I want his work. It's just so expensive now. I mean, it's up there with Bill Trailer and because people acknowledge the significance of these drawings and it's just so beautiful. If you can find them or get them.

Speaker B I love that.

Speaker A Thank you for that.

Speaker E All right, and our third lightning round question. If you could ask every visitor to the MFA Boston one feedback question, what would it be?

Speaker C What inspired you about your visit?

Speaker A So great. So my favorite thing about these lightning round questions is that because it's free association, everybody approaches them differently. And so it's not just that you learn about what the different folks we've been able to talk to care about and more about their work, but I think it always is bringing up something more than that. So thank you for. Thank you for playing.

Speaker B Yeah. It shows us how you think, not just what you think.

Speaker A Exactly, exactly. So we're wrapping up now and so I wanted to ask you, Michael, what are you working on right now? What's in the works that you're especially excited about that you can share with us?

Speaker C So, three things. The symposium that's coming up on May 23rd, that's going to be hopefully a field changer in terms of the way we look at the genre. I'm working on the Minnie Evans exhibition for 2025 and right after that will be a major folk and self taught exhibition called A Joyful Noise art for the 21st century. And what makes that a different kind of exhibition? Traditional folk and self taught art will now be paired with contemporary art. Not by again, whether you went to school or not, but your approach to materials and your approach to themes and will bring those, those two things together and hopefully that'll create a joyful noise.

Speaker B So Michael is a joyful noise. Is that going to be like a short term exhibition or a longer term installation?

Speaker C This is an exhibition that will run a year.

Speaker E Great.

Speaker B Okay.

Speaker C This will run a year.

Speaker B Exciting. Well, so our last question for you, it's broad and we like to ask it so that you can kind of say anything that we haven't touched on. But what do you wish people knew about the kind of work you do?

Speaker C Oh, that's an interesting question. What I wish they knew about the work I do? Well, what I'm doing is slowly but surely orienting people to this genre and the way I do this isn't. There's. If I could sort of paraphrase Aesop and that is art is known by the company it keeps. So if folk and self taught is art is keeping company with traditional art in a museum, then people will come to see it and value it the same way. It's just not this little kooky, off brand category of art that sits in the lower level of museums, but it's on the same level with European centric art art, Eurocentric art, I should say it's on the same level with contemporary art. So that's what I'm hoping comes out of all of this work, whether it's acquisitions, whether it's exhibitions, whether it's scholarship, that people will come away with this notion of inclusion, equity, diversity and access.

Speaker A Thank you so much. This has been a wonderful conversation. I feel like I've learned a lot more about how you approach and think about the work that you're doing and really excited to see some of these projects you've described that are going to be coming up in the next couple of years.

Speaker B Yeah, I can't wait to see the Minnie Evans show especially. But a Joyful Noise also sounds just. It's going to be great, I'm sure.

Speaker C Yeah. Thank you.

Speaker E I think that conversation was a great way to end our first season and think more about approaches to folk art within the realm of American art. And I'd love to hear more about what you both feel is how Michael is breaking the framework.

Speaker B Thanks, Kat. I so enjoyed Michael's interview and he just has such a fresh perspective on folk art and folk artists and curating in that realm. And I wanted to highlight, as in our breaking the Frame moment, that I really felt like Michael's background, 25 years working as an artist really is key to his methodology that breaks the frame of traditionally curating American art. I think what he was saying about really understanding and appreciating the hard and serious work that goes into making a work of art and how that informs his curating and his acquisitions is really powerful. And maybe especially so for folk art because so many artists who are categorized under the category of folk art, sometimes we don't even know who the maker was, but sometimes we know the maker, but we don't have a lot of details about their biography. And Michael's ability to really mine the work itself, to understand the emotional and physical and expert labor that went into each object, is, you know, it's part of a long tradition of folk art curating. But I also think it's something that he does especially well and is a major standout for him. We also just wanted to mention that since we recorded this interview with Michael, he has retired from his position at the mfa. I can say from someone who lives in Salem that he'll be missed in the Boston metro area museum world, but I also think that Michael is far from done in terms of his work curating and writing about American art and American folk art.

Speaker A Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And we want to thank our listeners for following along with us this season on Breaking the Frame. Thank you for listening to this episode. We will be recording more in the future, so keep your eye out for a second season that will, you know, explore other topics related to Breaking the Framework, thinking about museums and American art. For this episode, make sure to check out the link in the episode description to find out more about some of the artists and projects that we talked about today with some visuals.

Speaker B And thanks as always to our expert producer Kat, who was an incredible editor and producer in all ways for this season. And we also want to thank Emily's students at KU who brought such amazing research and curiosity and modes of inquiry to this project. So I look forward to working with you again next season.

Speaker A Sam.

Episode 6: Michael Bramwell

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