The AIDS Memorial Quilt will be displayed as part of the Folklife exhibit “Crisis and Creativity.”
The Smithsonian Institution’s annual Folklife Festival starts today with a trio of cultural expositions filling the National Mall. This year’s alliterative themes are “Campus and Community,” “Citified” and “Crisis and Creativity,” focusing, respectively on the country’s land-grant colleges, arts from east of the Anacostia River and the 25th anniversary of the AIDS Memorial Quilt.
“Campus and Community” will feature exhibits sponsored by a collection of several dozen large public universities—from as far away as the University of Hawaii—showing off their agricultural and environmental programs. Among the activities being offered is gardening, and quite a bit of it, too. There will be practical demonstrations like instructions on how to grow one’s own pizza ingredients, and more lofty stuff, such as heirloom plantings and robotics competitions.
“Crisis and Creativity,” meanwhile, marks three decades of the fight against HIV and AIDS with the daily unfurling of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, which is marking a quarter-century of being an ever-expanding beacon of grief and loss. Now some 1.3 million square feet, the quilt will be unfolded every day during the festival between 10 a.m. and noon, with visitors invited to read from the list of the 93,000 AIDS victims whose names are embroidered on the tapestry.
The festival is also bringing in a collection of visual and performing artists to lead events around the quilt, including concerts, storytelling, dance performances and lessons on how to add to the quilt’s 48,000 existing panels.
Finally, “Citified” provides a bolt of local flavor, plucking from the artistry of D.C.’s neighborhoods east of the Anacostia. The Folklife Festival will showcase the public art that has sprouted up in the Anacostia neighborhood, several of the performance groups that make their homes there and venues like THEARC and the African Heritage Center.
The festival also promises a taste of D.C.’s home-grown music, and that means go-go. It might not feel the same without Chuck Brown, but on July 7, the Folklife Festival will feature an all-day tribute to the late godfather of go-go. Among the groups performing wil be the Cold Hearted Band, No Question Band and Junkyard Band; there will also be a go-go-scored fitness class and oral histories of the genre featuring many of the musicians who played with Brown over the years.
But the festival kicks off tonight with a big concert featuring George Clinton, Ivan Neville and Dumpstaphunk and Meshell Ndegeocello hosted by radio talker Tom Joyner. The concert will be broadcast live on the festival’s website.
The Folklife Festival begins today and runs through Sunday, July 1, and again from Wednesday, July 4 through Sunday, July 8. All the details of the festival are available on its website.
