Martha Reeves, from Martha an the Vandellas, at the 2011 festival. AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

This summer the Smithsonian Folklife Festival will feature a five-year research project entitled “The Will to Adorn: African American Diversity, Style, and Identity.” The project garners its inspiration from urban hubs like Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans, New York, Oakland, Calif., and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Students and faculty of African-American universities extended their assistance to the Smithsonian staff by helping document the fashion of African Americans through interviews, photographs, and field work.

Here’s what Diana N’Diaye, program curator had to say about the exhibition: “Whether we realize it or not, we are all dress artists…the way we compose our look is a creative expression of our ideas about who we are and who we aspire to be. This program explores the diversity of African American traditions of style, but also teaches young people the importance of documenting their own culture and saving that information for themselves and future generations.”

The program features 40 participants and will occupy three tents, each devoted to different aspects of the program. The Collaborative Research Tent allows visitors to speak with researchers and artisans, the Design Studio Tent will allow visitors to see different fashion styles from different communities and the Rock the Runway Tent will feature fashion shows for visitor to view.

This Smithsonian Folklife Festival will be held Wednesday, June 26 through Sunday, June 30 and Wednesday, July 3 through Sunday July 7 at the National Mall. The events are free and last from 11:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. each day followed by concerts and dance parties starting at 6 p.m.

The event will also feature two other programs, “Hungarian Heritage: Roots to Revival” and “One World, Many Voices: Endangered Languages and Cultural Heritage.” If you’re in the DC area this sounds like something worth experiencing this summer.

(Washington Post) — Retired Lt. Col. Leo R. Gray, one of the Tuskegee Airmen, stands next to “The Spirit of Tuskegee,” a World War II-era plane at end of a cross-country flight to its new home at the Smithsonian, at Andrews Air Force Base. The PT-13 Stearman open-cockpit biplane was used as a trainer plane for the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II. Decommissioned in 1946, used for decades as a crop duster and damaged in a crash, it was purchased at public auction and restored over the course of three years by Capt. Matthew Quy, a former B-52 bomber pilot who deploys to Afghanistan later this month, and his wife, Tina. It is one of the few surviving planes with ties to Moton Field and Tuskegee Institute, a segregated facility in Tuskegee, Ala., where nearly 1,000 black pilots were trained to fly escort for bombing missions over North Africa and Italy.

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(New York Times) — In the late 1970s, when Lonnie G. Bunch III had his first job at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, veterans of the Tuskegee Airmen, the all-black squadron, accused the museum of playing down their contributions during World War II. In response, the museum asked some of the African-Americans on staff to allow their faces to be used on mannequins, increasing the “black presence” in its exhibits.  “I didn’t do it,” Mr. Bunch said recently, who was among those asked. “That’s not the way I wanted to be part of a museum.”

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(CBS News) — Bernard Kinsey is a collector – and a storyteller. Get him started and he can’t stop.   His converted wine cellar is filled with fine, vintage African Americana, reports CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker.   ”This stuff is not only valuable, it’s really rare,” Kinsey said.   It’s a passion he shares with Shirley, his wife of 43 years.  ”I buy the dead artists, she buys the living artists,” Bernard Kinsey said.   The retired Xerox executives collected for four decades, until their L.A. house was bursting.

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