WBUR Spotlights Digital Museum The Banjo Project

With the Carolina Chocolate Drops and fiddler Joe Thompson. Fields is standing at center, with Emerson assistant professor and MFA alumnus Shaun Clarke on the right. Courtesy photo

Visual and Media Arts associate professor Marc Fields and assistant professor Shaun Clarke are hard at work building The Banjo Project, a digital museum paying homage to the legacy of the banjo, which has a complicated history. The project received a National Institute for Humanities grant in late 2018 that will allow for the full launch of the dynamic website as early as fall 2019.

WBUR’s Andrea Shea visited the home of collector and banjo historian Jim Bollman, and the offices of Fields and Clarke on campus to get the story.

Read and listen to the piece here.