Agriculture - Overview
From butter churns to diesel tractors, the Museum's agricultural artifacts trace the story of Americans who work the land. Agricultural tools and machinery in the collections range from a John Deere plow of the 1830s to 20th-century cultivators and harvesters. The Museum's holdings also include overalls, aprons, and sunbonnets; farm photographs; milk cans and food jars; handmade horse collars; and some 200 oral histories of farm men and women in the South. Prints in the collections show hundreds of scenes of rural life. The politics of agriculture are part of the story, too, told in materials related to farm workers' unions and a group of artifacts donated by the family of the labor leader Cesar Chavez.
"Agriculture - Overview" showing 2 items.
- No Image Available
Potomac : East and West (portfolio of photoprints), 1991
- Notes
- Artist b. Port Chester, N.Y., 1945; childhood in several American cities and Switzerland; studied printmaking at George Washington University, Washington, D.C., graduated 1969; gave up printmaking for photography due to influence of Farm Security Administration photographs he had seen at the Library of Congress as a teenager. Self-employed photographer since 1970, working on grants and contracts to document workers, rural poverty, etc.; also landscape, still life, and portraiture. To Denmark in 1979, doing commercial photography for about ten years before returning to the U.S. Work in many museum and private collections. Artist's residency, Yaddo, 1992-1993
- Summary
- Photographs of agricultural landscapes, cemeteries, industrial buildings (exterior and interior views), commercial buildings in rural areas, etc., in the Potomac River region of Washington, D.C., Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia. Each image contains a small area hand-colored by the photographer, providing a subtly mysterious, often whimsical or humorous effect
- Cite as
- Jan Faul "Potomac East and West" Portfolio, 1991, Archives Center, National Museum of American History. Gift of the artist
- Date
- 1991
- 1990-2000
- 1980-2000
- photographer
- Faul, Jan 1945-
- Local number
- 1991.0878 (NMAH Acc.)
- Data Source
- Archives Center - NMAH
- No Image Available
Jan Faul, "Farming the Welsh Hills", Portfolio, 1994
- Notes
- Artist b. Port Chester, N.Y., 1945; childhood in several American cities and Switzerland; studied printmaking at George Washington University, Washington, D.C., graduated 1969; gave up printmaking for photography due to influence of Farm Security Administration photographs he had seen at the Library of Congress as a teenager. Self-employed photographer since 1970, working on grants and contracts to document workers, rural poverty, etc.; also landscape, still life, and portraiture. To Denmark 1979: commercial photography for about ten years before returning to the U.S. Work in many museum and private collections. Artist's residency, Yaddo, 1992-1993
- Artist's comment about the portfolio subjects: Welsh men and women came to Waukesha County in the 1840s to launch another part of America's dairy history; after five or six generations, many farms are still family owned. Today's farms are threatened by developers due to rising land prices (up to $50,000/acre perked) and their central location between Milwaukee (east), Madison (west), and Chicago (south)
- Summary
- 32 photographs made in Waukesha County, Wisconsin, May 1994. Includes images of farms, dairy barns, silos, cemetery, roads, etc
- Cite as
- Jan Faul "Farming the Welsh Hills" Portfolio, 1994, Archives Center, National Museum of American History. Gift of the artist [or Barbara Scheide: consult finding aid for credits for specific photographs]
- Date
- 1994
- 1990-2000
- photographer
- Faul, Jan 1945-
- Local number
- 1994.0402 (NMAH Acc.)
- 1994.0403 (NMAH Acc.)
- Data Source
- Archives Center - NMAH