March 22, 2006 -- The Arkansas State University Museum is hosting a new temporary exhibition, “Blues Placemaking: Through the Lens of a Folklorist.” The photography exhibition will be in the Museum Lobby Gallery through April 16.

Blues Placemaking is in conjunction with the Delta Blues Symposium XII, March 30-April 1, sponsored by the Department of English and Philosophy at ASU.

The exhibition includes 25 photographs of jook joints and musical events made by Dr. Gregory Hansen, assistant professor of folklore and English at ASU.

Dr. Hansen says, “I selected these photographs to portray relationships between blues and places in three sites in the Delta. My interest is less in providing a comprehensive view of famous blues sites or musicians and more of an overview of ways that placemaking is created through buildings, neighborhoods, tourist marketing, festivals and live performances.” The photographs were made between October 2002 and June 2005.

Events and places depicted are various sites in West Memphis that were once jook joints; the Arkansas Blues and Heritage Festival in Helena; and an abandoned company store turned jook joint, also abandoned, at Hopewell, near West Memphis.
Images of the “ The Crossroads” at Clarksdale, Miss., Sun Records in Memphis, and an Apalachicola, Fla., jook joint turned Internet provider are also on exhibit.

Dr. Hansen specializes in folklife of America’s southern states. He teaches courses on folklore, fieldwork, ethnography, literature, American Indian verbal art and folk music, in addition to the Heritage Studies graduate program.

He has completed public folklore projects for a range of organizations, including the Smithsonian Institution, Danish Immigrant Museum, Florida Folklife Program and the Kentucky Center for the Arts. Some support for the exhibit was received from the National Endowment for the Arts, Folk Arts Program.

The ASU Museum is open to the public. Hours are 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and 1 to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Admission is a suggested $2 donation per person. To contact the museum, call (870) 972-2074 or visit http://museum@astate.edu.