For Educators: Exhibit Overview

Tradition/Innovation celebrates Southern masterworks of contemporary craft and traditional art, and the individuals who, living today in the South, create these often beautiful, sometimes unexpected and always compelling objects. Presented by South Arts and a select group of museums and originally sponsered by the National Endowment for the Arts, Tradition/Innovation invites you to share the heritage of the Southeast’s traditional arts and contemporary crafts, as well as to explore innovations within both artforms.

The South is home to many traditional arts that families and communities continue to practice today. These visual arts, typically utilitarian, are usually deeply rooted, reflect a community aesthetic, and have experienced only modest change over time. Contemporary craft in the South, in comparison, also possesses its own rich history beginning with the folk school movement in the early 1900s, and has grown in range of expression with each individual artist. Artists have been, and continue to be, drawn to this region to learn and practice their chosen artforms. Throughout the exhibit you will find both parallels and contrasts in the lives and works of contemporary craftspeople and traditional artists.

In Tradition/Innovation, you’ll experience works made by 30 of the South’s practicing master artists from South Arts’s nine partner states – Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. The artwork in the exhibit was selected by the artists in consultation with curators Jean McLaughlin and Kathleen Mundell. These pieces represent what the artists deem as their living masterpieces. Though no exhibit could include every master artist or masterwork of art in the region, we hope that Tradition/Innovation opens a door for you to a broad range of forms, materials and content.

A Special Invitation to 5th-12th Grade Educators

The web-based educational component of Tradition/Innovation is intended to make museum visits more meaningful by providing a wealth of related art and cross-curricular lessons. It is also intended to make the masterworks selected for this touring exhibit accessible to educators and students who are unable to see the tour in person.

You can find images and activities for your classroom or after-school program based on the artist, they medium, or the type of activity.

Resources by Medium (PowerPoints, interviews, images,)

Classroom/After-School Activities (Guiding questions for students, pre- and post-Visit activities, connections to national standards, cross-curricular connections, lesson plans)