In Memoriam: Bess Lomax Hawes
The staff and Board of Directors of the Alliance for California Traditional Arts (ACTA) expresses deep sorrow over the recent death of Bess Lomax Hawes (1921-2009), the mother of public folklore in this country.
Bess' hard work, vision and intelligence led the establishment of public folklore and folk arts programs across the United States. While she is remembered for many things, it was under her direction as director of the National Endowment for the Arts Folks Arts Program that the discipline received national attention and became a program on the level of other artistic disciplines. During her years as director, from 1977-1992, funding for the program grew from $100,000 to over $4 million and staffing increased from one to six. Her efforts to create state-based folk arts programs were successful in 50 of the 56 states and territories. Her State Apprenticeship Initiative helped create programs for traditional arts in over 40 states.
After Bess retired from the NEA, she moved back to her California home in Northridge, where she made herself available to local folk & traditional arts efforts. She was still an amazing advocate and strategist of field-building into her 80s, and in 1997 she worked to co-found the Alliance for California Traditional Arts, along with other folklorists, cultural workers and artists at the California Arts Council sponsored Asilomar conference. She provided wisdom, direction and major gravitas to our fledgling effort and as ACTA established as a non-profit in 2001, she served as an honorary board member – then a youthful octogenarian.
In the words of ACTA board member and CEO of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, Dan Sheehy, “Bess was our inspiration. She was the person who talked the talk as well as walked the walk. She was very much an activist, social, cultural, political, sometimes, activist, and she brought that sense of commitment of activism to her work in the Arts Endowment as well. Bess in a way was the right person at the right time in the right place for our country for the National Endowment for the Arts in my point of view. She came with the enormous credentials of being a Lomax, of knowing the key people who were part of and/or influenced by the American folk revival and she had that reputation she had those network connections and she brought her own way of being articulate. I remember many occasions where in the early days of folk arts, when it was really new, people were not accustomed to the issues of the folks arts field and communities had and it was her lot in life to be able to stand up in front of the National Council on the Arts and the senior people in her agency and some of the senior arts organizers in the arts world in the United States and defend things like Samoan tattooing as being appropriate for the National Endowment for the Arts. And she would speak with the passion and with a presence of being both grandmotherly and being a grizzly bear all at the same time and cornering her listeners into not possibly being able to object to her line of thinking and arguing and justifying the presence something like Samoan tattooing that went back centuries and centuries in Samoan culture and was so much a core part of their personal and interpersonal and social expression. And Bess made in that sense made great strides for the entire folk arts field in my point of view of giving us words to give to use to convince people to bring people in and let them discover what we were all so passionate about.”
The NEA has launched a special section of its website in Bess’ honor, complete with remembrances by some of her many “children,” a video and more about her tremendous life’s work. Please visit the National Endowment for the Arts.
