Wait a minute. Isn’t Vesterheim the National Norwegian-American Museum and Heritage Center? What’s this about classes in Swedish folk art?
While most classes at Vesterheim’s Folk Art School emphasize Norwegian folk-art traditions, we often include a number of classes in other traditions as well.
These cousins and friends of Norwegian folk arts help give perspective. The dialog with other traditions illuminates the historical connections that the different traditions share and the influences each has on the other. Like any good conversation, this back-and-forth can open new ways of understanding and even start other conversations, pushing the folk art of one tradition into exciting new expressions.
