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Founded in 1969 by John Rice Irwin, The Museum of Appalachia shows an authentic mountain farm and pioneer village. The historic site features
log structures, exhibit buildings with thousands of authentic Appalachian artifacts, multiple gardens and free range farm animals—all surrounded by split-rail fences.
Although the museum is in Anderson County about 20 miles north on I-75 from downtown Knoxville, Liza Zenni, the executive director of Knoxville’s Arts and Culture Alliance, considers it an integral member of her organization and the East Tennessee community:
“The Museum of Appalachia has been a part of us for as long as I can remember. The musicians and artists who partici- pate in their wonderful homecoming every autumn are often members with us as well. It’s included among 20 other attractions in our ‘Museums of Knox- ville’ brochure we distribute through- out welcome centers and hotels across East Tennessee and the state.”
Everyday Things
An early impression that the Museum of Appalachia is not your standard archive of nonesuches is the house cats that swipe back and forth unimpeded among the exhibits. Moreover, almost all of the signs describing the display items appear to have been hand-lettered in
the same heavy black penmanship. And with only a few exceptions (such as Alvin York’s machine gun), what the museum preserves are typical, rather than notable, examples of history. Its motto: “What better way is there to know a people than to study the everyday things they made, used, mended, and cherished... and cared for with loving hands?”
When Meyer praises the ingenu- ity of the Appalachian people, she is referring to their necessity-driven handicraft: What a family had was what the family could create for itself.
“You couldn’t always go to the store,” she says, “and you had to get every bit of use out of what you did have. If you had one thing and needed something else, you had to figure out how to trans- form the one into the other.”
For example, one exhibit displays the work of an ingenuous rustic musician who created a guitar body out of an old toilet seat. Alongside that is what is dated to be America’s second extant banjo—a musical instrument that in part owed
its popularity among country folk to the ease of constructing a serviceable instru- ment from rude materials.
In terms of animal husbandry and farming, the same efficiency prevailed.
“The country expression about hogs,” says Meyer, “was use everything but the squeal.”
John Rice Irwin’s inspiration in founding the museum was to preserve this historical and cultural context so that the cleverness and resourceful- ness of this mountain culture would be recognized by later generations. That strangers and outsiders would convert a mountain artifact into discordant kitsch he felt trivialized its significance—like someone using Dolly Parton’s childhood coat of many colors as a brightly cheer- ful shower curtain without ever listen- ing to her song about what it meant to her. Or much like employing an antebel- lum slave shackle as a napkin ring.
When the dominant culture rides roughshod over a disempowered minor- ity, the minority often has a stronger urge to shield its signature ways from extinc-
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