In These Mountains:Traditional Appalachian Art Today

On View October 23rd, 2026 - February 7th, 2027​

In partnership with South Arts, In These Mountains: Traditional Appalachian Art Today presents a dynamic survey of artists who participated in the Emerging Traditional Artists Program, a program that provides financial support and professional development for artists in Appalachian Regional Commission counties in the Southeast to ensure the continuation of traditional art and culture in Appalachia. The exhibition highlights artists whose practices sit along a spectrum of traditional methods and contemporary exploration.

In These Mountains highlights artists whose practices sit along a spectrum of traditional methods and contemporary exploration. While grounded in traditional forms, techniques, and materials, their work also reflects adaptation, innovation, and response to present-day cultural, social, and artistic contexts. The result is a body of work that resists static definitions of tradition and, instead, emphasizes tradition as a living, emergent process.

The artists featured in In These Mountains represent a cross-section of Southern art and craft and create a space to examine how traditional knowledge is carried forward, transformed, and (re)interpreted. Representing basketweaving, woodworking, painting, handweaving, and sculpture, the artists in this exhibition challenge the narrow distinctions between folk, traditional, and contemporary art. Traditional arts are not fixed artifacts of the past, but rather evolving practices that are shaped by the people who continue to make, teach, and live them.

This exhibition is guest curated by Taylor Dooley Burden, Director of Traditional Arts at South Arts, and features work by Delia Fian, Candace Mullins, Roxie Fricton, Micah Wiles, Brian Melton, Skye Tafoya, Katie Bister, Orlando Corona, Edy Aguilar, and Amanda Banks.

EXHIBITION SUPPORTED BY: