THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
Oral History Office
SUBJECT: ITC History
INTERVIEW WITH: Joan Keate & John Davis
DATE: 15 January 2000
PLACE: ITC
INTERVIEWER: Laurie Gudzikowski
TAPE 1, SIDE 1
G: I'm at the Institute of Texan Cultures, and I am interviewing Joan Keate about her years that she worked at the Institute of Texan Cultures. The date is January 15, 1999. Joan, would you like to start by telling us when you came to work at the Institute and what your first job was here?
K: I started in January of 1977, and I came because I knew Claudia Ball and Claudia had just been exalted to the position of Festival Manager. Previously she had done many jobs at the Institute but, under O.T. Baker, she was now running the Festival. And I happened to call and say that I was looking for a job, and she said, “Well, come on down because I need somebody, 'cause I'm doing another job and the job I was doing I need somebody to take my place.” And, essentially, the reason, she used to tell me she hired me was that we'd both gone to the same school and both had the same English teacher, and she knew I could write and spell reasonably well. And she was...that was really the Joan Keate & John Davis 2
criteria, besides a social friendship that we went by, to
K: hire. Now my job was Special Events. And Special Events at the Institute, at that time, entailed whatever came down the pike that had to do with celebrating the diverse cultures that were on the floor. And everybody had ideas. Jack Maguire was the executive director. He had Department Heads, and the Department Heads met, as they do now. And they would come up with ideas, usually out of the Research Department. And the Research Department was rife with all sorts of people with all sorts of ideas. I met James Patrick McGuire, who had a whole list of ethnic groups to which...for which he was responsible. John Davis had another one. Al Lowman had another one. There were a few... there were several others. And when they would, well, about the first celebrations we started, the first thing we did when I got here was, we started a series of Sundays called Special Sundays. And they would celebrate once a month - one Sunday a month - and they would celebrate a particular culture. The first one was Ireland. And I was dumped into this with all these files, from all these people I did not know. Joan Garcia was one. John, do you remember Joan?
D: Yes, I remember Joan.
K: And did she do this sort of thing?
D: She did that sort of thing maybe as a transfer person, Joan Keate & John Davis 3
I think, I'm not...[inaudible].
K: Yeah. Okay. So we were going to celebrate the Irish.
K And we celebrated the Irish with dancing. We got the stage built, we got the dancing, we got a table decoration, and I'll never forget the food, because it was green Kool-Aid and green colored sugar cookies. And the entire cost of entertaining - and I'll swear a hundred and fifty people were here; it was crowded and all the green Kool-Aid ran out. And...but they were of great cheer and stayed much longer than they should have, and had a wonderful time and there were lots and lots of Irish is all that I remember. So after that we had to get organized. [Turn it off for a while]
D: Was Jim Fox doing the music? Because I...the chronology is as weak for me at times...?
K: Yeah. That was '77, and it was a good...
D: Three years later...
K: Following the Irish the ones that I can remember, and this, were the Filipinos, the British, the Scottish, the Czechs, the Poles - it went on for quite a while. But what I...
G: Can I break in just a second? Can you tell us a little bit who was on staff at that time? Who was...your boss was Claudia Ball. Jo Ann was in charge of...
K: Jo Ann was... No, Jo Ann was Claudia's secretary, or Joan Keate & John Davis 4
administrative assistant. John was head of Research and... who else was on Research?
D: Again, dates are failing me. Was Bill Fields still
D: here at that time?
K: Bill Fields was here.
D: Bill Fields was here for two more years.
K: Melvin Saenz.
D: Melvin Saenz. And Diane Green had just left. She left much earlier. Okay.
K: Okay.
D: Good.
G: Was Bonnie Truax here? Was she...was Bonnie Truax here?
K: I think. Who was before Bonnie Truax? I don't think we had, we had any...
G: She was the first one.
K: Because it was Patrick that was...who was doing the volunteer work.
D: Uh-huh.
K: He was in charge of the volunteers - I don't think, willingly borrowed, from John. But given the responsibility to organize a volunteer effort.
G: So the volunteer program...
K: In '76 the volunteer program started.
D: Yes.Joan Keate & John Davis 5
K: We had our first party in '77. It was forty-six people. Don Strange catered it. It was barbeque and it cost $3.25 a person.
D: Remarkable. James Patrick, you know, had had...left
D: Research for a while.
K: And went into Education.
D: See, he became the Head, actually, of that...of the first...
K: The department.
D: Defined Department, which was the Total Education - education at that time.
K: So that was before Bonnie.
D: That was before. And Bonnie came in later. I don't remember the year, because...
K: I don't either.
D: James Patrick decided, in my opinion quite rightly, that he should not be running that or did not want to run that.
K: I remember.
D: He came back to Research, you know.
K: I had been a docent at the zoo, and in order to take the job had to meet with Louie de Sabado, who was the zoo director, and beg him over lunch at Earl Abel's to let me out of my responsibilities so I could go to work and earn a living. And he gracefully let me. And so I came over here Joan Keate & John Davis 6
with this monster book, because I had been head docent... monster book of how to run a volunteer program. And Patrick said, "How do you run a volunteer program?" And I said, "Can I help you?" And I gave him this huge book, which meant absolutely nothing, but we got to be real good
K: friends, starting that up. And he already had a small cadre of volunteers. The paid guide concept had been given up in favor of volunteers. This place has the best - and I'll say this with no reservation whatever - the best volunteer force I've seen anywhere in the country. And I've looked into them. And they are...it's phenomenal; it is really phenomenal.
G: I think it might be the best in the world.
K: Got me. I don't know the rest of the world, but you went to the Museum of Mann, and they didn't have a good one there, as good a one or any.
G: ...none.
K: But, the point is that he worked on it; Claudia ran the parties. We did all parties. We did all support for whoever else was giving a party.
G: When you say parties, you're talking about renting out the building or our own parties?
K: Exhibit openings - that and our own exhibit openings. We were in charge of everything: guest lists, name tags, mailing, budget, decor and all the University background Joan Keate & John Davis 7
that goes into that. You have to learn how to do all those things - three or four times. But anyway, there were some real fine events. And really good people coming to them. I think that probably is one reason we've had such a good base set, both for a volunteer program and for future development boards and so forth. We had to handle all those, all the
K: arrangements for everything was our responsibility, was Claudia's responsibility, and she delegated it to me because she was running the Folklife Festival.
G: Now who else was on staff? The Development Director was?
K: What Development Director?
G: No, no, no. We didn't have a Development Director.
K: We didn't have one.
G: Okay.
K: We didn't have any Marketing.
G: Business office?
K: We did have a...what did we call it? Information Office or a PR Office.
D: Public Relations.
K: Public Relations Office. And I'll...I'll have to look up who worked there. The Business Office. Minnie was there, Minnie Collins. Joe Perry, Locke, Scotty.
D: Joe, I think, absorbed Gigi McKee after a time, too.
K: Yes, she was here.Joan Keate & John Davis 8
D: A German...
K: At the retirement...
D: Yeah. She was on Joe's staff. All of these people Joe stole from Research, yeah. One thing about what you did as far as support to Research - you were speaking about helping Patrick. You helped everyone, because in the events with the ethnic groups you taught a good number of researchers
D: how to deal with ethnic groups, in the sense of good stuff and intractable stuff, too.
K: Well, I don't really know how.
D: By example.
K: But...in giving orders. But they all enjoyed themselves. We dragged in...for the British Tea we had Ann Armstrong up. She was president...she was Ambassador to London, to Great Britain. And we had her pouring tea at a silver service. We had cookies and from the British the DBE was here in great form and costume. And also the Pub Ladies from the Folklife Festival, from the Pub. And you should have seen the DBE looking at the costumes of the Pub Ladies. It was priceless. But we did have seven silver services and we had seven pourers and we just outdid ourselves. Claudia was a master at this. The budgets to these things went from $75, crept up to about $300, and that is when we declared a demise situation. It was getting a little elaborate. And had...we felt that we had done enough. And besides, the Joan Keate & John Davis 9
exhibit openings were getting very, very exciting by that time. And there were a lot of things that Dr. Davis will not agree with, such as Texas Artists exhibits.
D: ...[inaudible].
K: But we did continue to have them for a while, such as Janet Schook and Michael Fraery, and who were some more?
D: Uh...[inaudible].
K: And what was your objection?
D: Uh, my...
K: Or was it you?
D: No, not necessarily. I did have one objection to some of the artists. Research was in a rock and a hard place, between using State money to monetarily advance a private artist's fortune.
K: Oh.
D: The same criticism was brought against the Folk Festival. We bring in one person we choose, who's a cane bottom chair maker, and all of a sudden he can make a lots of money. Essentially these people are receiving huge amounts of advertising at State expense, and, of course, the other eighty-seven artists out there we say, “Gee, I'm sorry.” And for that reason, I always felt that the Institute could not extend...
K: I didn't think we sold anything. I thought...
D: No, no. Joan Keate & John Davis 10
K: Just exhibiting.
D: They play it for advertising.
K: Oh, I see, okay, well, point taken.
D: And some larger museums in the country were dead-set against that, and I thought that we should be too. But, in particular, Jack did not agree that this was a tremendous advantage to some of these people since they had already made their mark.
K: Uh-huh.
D: I, by way of parity, I wanted to show my artists, for instance...[inaudible].
K: Exactly.
D: You know, for the advertising; and that was denied and I got into considerable trouble...[inaudible].
G: Now, how long were you doing this kind of work?
K: Um. All the way up.
G: ...[inaudible] job changed. ...[inaudible]
K: Well, we kept on going, as more or less a support group, through...all the way through the split into downtown campus. And then after that we re-aligned ourselves; or re-thought, after... This was well after Jo Ann took over from Claudia and Claudia retired. Um...
G: Roughly when did Claudia retire?
K: '88 - before that.
G: Well, it was before '88 because I came in '87. Joan Keate & John Davis 11
D: It was before '88. Uh-huh.
K: '85?
D: It was...
K: The first Festival poster was '81.
D: No, it was before I left, so it was '83 or '84.
K: '3 or '84.
D: Yeah.
K: And Jo Ann assumed that position. Meanwhile Jo Ann had gotten her degree at night school, working under...working as Claudia's administrative assistant. And Claudia had
K: groomed her to take over. And O.T. was gone, and this all worked out. Then I guess the major thing that Special Events underwent was to put more emphasis on rentals. We've now had, in the '80s, the reworked conference room and auditorium, and we were going to be the world's answer to a boardroom. We were going to be the boardroom for everybody in the world. Well, that didn't work out. But we still could be. It's very nice, and I'm sure we spent a lot of money and it was well-spent and it works. And we had to make a lot of rules and a lot of regulations. And actually the making of those rules, both for outside caterers and in-house workings, have proved extremely valuable, because we would get direct personal contact with somebody who was unhappy. And we would have to write a...the proper letter and put it in our procedures. And our procedures and Joan Keate & John Davis 12
guidelines, even though they are University-run or approved, do apply to other Institutions, and have been a real source of...in other words, I find my guidelines all over town. Whenever I see anybody else there's always a line - anybody else's - there's a line or two that came directly from ours. And you just know that people don't think of these things, but they happen, and whenever they happen you put it in there and that's the way it came out. And it really has worked quite well for the last fifteen years. It's amazing.
D: Without calling too many names, unless you want to, I don't care, why don't you give us a good and a bad example
D: of this - a good story that happened with a caterer or service person and perhaps a bad one, humorous or not, as you prefer.
K: Well, there are all sorts of things. A client is an unnamed beast. They wanted to put a fog machine in the dome and make it all foggy. The fog machines use water. Water comes...water condenses and the screens would have melted and fallen on the floor as it was. One doctor's group, therefore, no fog machines. And they will swear to their dying day that the fog machines do not have water, but they do. The medical group, very staid doctors, wonderful surgeons, the creme of the...the creme de la creme - had a Valentine's...Valentine's Day party. They used Mylar helium balloons, and the doctors pulled out their foldable scalpelsJoan Keate & John Davis 13
and punched all the balloons and punched and cut the ribbons and they all arrived on the ceiling the next morning, forty feet high. We got a cherry picker in at great expense, I think it was $300.00, and went up. Bill Ward went up with a wooden pole with a nail on it and poked holes in the Mylar balloons. Well, he poked a hole in a screen when he did this. And so that started that, and we no longer have helium balloons anywhere, including Jo Ann Andera's event, when we had one Mylar...one tiny little balloon which ended up on the ceiling. So we have learned our lessons there. The caterers have knocked down trees; they've knocked over walls; they've knocked down railings; that's all right; we
K: love them. But we put on these wonderful events, and prove that museums can be not just party houses but can be viable sites and venues for all different kinds of events.
G: Of all of the events that you've done, which was the most exciting?
K: Those early ethnic things. I thoroughly enjoyed every one of them. And everyone of them had a debriefing from hell. Because we didn't know how to do them exactly - in the setting, in the setting of a museum; and we were learning. But they were the most exciting. We've had big exciting things like football people, and schools and all that. They aren't nearly as exciting as the early ones. We know how to do it now.Joan Keate & John Davis 14
G: How about some talk about the Texas Folklife Festival.
D: ...[inaudible].
G: You came just about the time that Folklife Festival started, so...
K: Unh-huh. No, just five years after. It was...I went to the first - the second one, I think, and remember, because my children were just that age, three or four or something, and I remember it being so wet, that I took my sandals off and waded through the puddles. So that must have been '72, '03, I guess. What was the first one? '72?
D: Yes, the great rain you're speaking of.
K: So, and '74 wasn't probably any different or whatever. But Jo Ann had - or Claudia - had said that we need
K: volunteers. Because the year I think she started... well, the year I came, '76, that last...the Festival before, when Henderson Shuffler had died just before it, something like that. And Jack Maguire had just come in, in '76. Her husband, who was a judge, an appellate judge, and who was about seven feet tall, he had to take tickets at a gate and Claudia did not think that that...that this was going to go over; he was not going to sign up every year. So she better behoove herself to find somebody to man those gates, and to sell souvenirs, and to do things like that. And this was a volunteer force. So she came into the office, my office, which was next door to hers at some point, and said, "We're Joan Keate & John Davis 15
going to do a volunteer program; start working on it." And she said, "Here's the Lions Clubs, so start with them." Well, I started and so...procedures saved the day. You go in, and, "Okay, Jo Ann, where do you need volunteers?" Now, there are twenty categories, there were two then.
G: The two were - ticket taker and...?
K: Two. Gates and the workers in the souvenir booths. Those wonderful souvenir booths that we were all so proud of. That closed up so well at night. Anyway, so I started out with the Lions Clubs, and that worked beautifully. Started out with some... Well first thing I did was call NIOSA and got ahold of Minnie Campbell, who was old then - now, she's still with us by the way, she's ninety - and she gave me a legal pad, page after page after page of personal
K: volunteers that she had worked with that were devoted to NIOSA. Well, this was, oh, a gold mine. So when the Lions took care of the gates, and I had some... I called some organizations, I don't know how I got their names; I can't remember: Executive Women International, the Women's Bar Auxiliary; the Bexar County Pharmaceutical Company, Women's Auxiliary and two others that were - no, and USAA. I think USAA has been with us from the very beginning. That was four groups, that was four days - Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday - and that was four kiosks. And that's how we filled the kiosks with those groups. Then I used allJoan Keate & John Davis 16
the personal volunteers for anything that Claudia came up with. Like, "Oh, wouldn't it be nice to have somebody outside the dressing rooms." Well, that takes two people on five shifts, every day of the Festival. That's a bunch of folks. And it has escalated since then. The participants sometimes use volunteers, and that's fun - the hoecakes are particularly popular. Anyway, so it has gone from a couple of hundred volunteers to about twenty-five hundred volunteers. And we've still got the same amount of staff. We now have one volunteer on staff and one person - one person - one volunteer doing it. And we manage to fill all those slots that need to be...need to be filled. And there are a lot more corporate ones than there used to be. And thank heaven, volunteerism is very popular now, very well thought of; it is corporately blessed. And you can twist
K: almost anybody's arm to get their people to work for you, for nothing. And just take that as it may. I...we give them a wristband to get in; they love the Festival; they don't complain. Why, I don't know. And they love it so. That's all I can say. We do have some no-shows; we have some excused and we have mostly people who are simply devoted to it and have been to every Festival since it started. And are proud of it.
G: Last time I looked, you were still running the operation out of a shoebox. Do you still run it out of a Joan Keate & John Davis 17
shoebox or have you computerized it?
K: Oh, heavenly days, I wouldn't dare give up my library boxes. They are practically gone. I have two or three saved back. Yes, we still used four by six cards. And no, I will never give them up. Yes, all the same data is done very carefully on a data base. Where you have to work on it twice instead of once.
G: The Folklife Festival, other than the volunteers. You've watched many changes come - people come and go in Folklife Festival. What observations do you have?
K: I think, I don't know...I'd like to hear from John on...because he's worked in it as a participant. I am thrilled that the same concept is there, as it was in the beginning. That the commercialism and the possibilities of putting it...sending it in a different direction have not materialized to any degree that I can notice. To me, it is
K: still what it set out to be. And I like that. Now, how do you feel about that?
D: Oh, I'll make a tape later. I...
K: Not enough for just...not just a comment, huh?
D: Well, I did a little bit of hired-gun work, you know. As far as trying to out-talk some of the folklorists who were bringing some grave concerns against the Festival, you know, because in the theory of the '70s, you could not bring in, you know, a story-teller without altering that person's Joan Keate & John Davis 18
life. And it does...like, you know, it turns them into a different person. And so it is essentially playing God. And these days that the edge is off of that because so many of the story-tellers are, after all, a performance artist, they are not traditionalist. And so I have seen some changes in terms of theory.
K: Yes.
D: That is best said, to an outside person should be almost invisible.
K: Very good point.
D: And I have, you know, less agreement with some of the changes that have been made, but I...those who have been in direct contact with the Festival people, I think, your estimation of...is a very nice thing to hear.
K: What the...what you come here for is still there.
D: That's a good line.
K: That spirit.
G: Tell me what you mean by what you come here for.
K: You come here to see different ethnic groups appreciate themselves. And you get it. And they're not...they're just like people everywhere. Some of them are more attractive than others; some of them are easier to work with; some of them are impossible. But you do get the flavor of the ethnic group no matter what is...[inaudible] I’ll never forget the Hawaiians. Now they've no more business being anJoan Keate & John Davis 19
ethnic group than the man-in-the-moon. Well, now, don't just get all pins and prickly. But with the...they had plastic skirts and they didn't have one native thing or native Polynesian thing among them. But again, the Native Americans had rayon ribbon, and they've had rayon ribbon as long as there has been rayon ribbon. They've had plastic beads as long as there have been glass beads over from China, in the...at the turn of the century. So I guess, what you're looking at, you have to take it like that and not expect more than is possible in this day and age. One Czech lady - when the Iron Curtain was really shut - said that they would go over and smuggle...they would have some couriers, some kind of contact with their friends on the other side of the Curtain, and they would smuggle out material for those particular Czech costumes. The big sleeves with the laces and the particular materials. And they would pay just any amount for them. And they were inexpensive over there but getting them here took maybe six K: months, and they would appreciate that so much, because America just did not have that kind of fabric; that's all there was to it.
G: We're almost to the end of the tape, so I'm going to turn...stop and turn the tape over. Okay.
END OF TAPE 1, SIDE 1
SIDE 2Joan Keate & John Davis 20
G: This is side two of the interview with Joan Keate. And John Davis is also here, and he's chiming in now and again with some questions and some observations. I'm Laurie Gudzikowski and I'm talking to Joan Keate about her years at the Institute of Texan Cultures. Folklife Festival. Can you give me a couple of what I call Folklife Moments, Joan? Some of those really neat things that have happened to you at Festival?
K: One, undeniably. You can always get saved at the Gospel Stage. And you have to do that during the Festival. Now none of us drink all four days; we're all undeniably sober and you can honestly get saved at the Gospel Stage. Especially with the Voices in the Mainland and the Duckens Family. And their...I've never been so impressed in my life as when that opera singer...what was?...remember, in the Duncans Family there is a Metropolitan opera singer who is a daughter...?
D: I don't remember the...[inaudible].
K: There is a daughter that's an opera singer. And they
K: had her one time. And then the people who have been here for so long. Another is the first time the Ukrainians of Dallas, the Dallas group, came. And explained a little bit about how they got together from the Ukraine - because there was the Cold War. And how they researched their dances and how they built a dance company and their dances Joan Keate & John Davis 21
are breathtaking. Those are the two. Besides every single person that serves food. The way it's done and the way these people devote themselves to the service of their...the food of their country, is simply amazing. And that's a constant amazement to me.
G: Can you give an example?
K: All of it. It's wonderful. I don't know how they get past the health inspector, but they...and believe me, he is rough. But they do. And from the frying pits of the Filipinos and the Scots, to the Hungarian goulash in those big - all that sausage. It's just amazing. And I love it. And I think it...I think it really does bring together the spirit and the wholeness of the Festival together.
G: I'd like you to turn your mind now to kind of the physical way out of the Institute. Where was your office when you were first here?
K: I don't remember. Do you remember?
D: No, I don't.
K: I don't remember.
D: A lot of the walls downstairs were different, of
D: course.
K: Bill Hewitt had Jo Ann's office.
D: Yes.
K: Then he had mine, down in the basement.
D: In the basement. Joan Keate & John Davis 22
K: But that was much later.
G: Were you in the basement when you started?
K: I was in the basement. Then the Festival came up here. I've always been with Festival, because Jo Ann pays part of my salary which was the only way we could get...or Claudia paid part of my salary, which was the only way we could get somebody hired to do that. Until Special Events started selling enough to be able to stand on its own, or one-third or two-thirds or whatever. I don't know the divvy-up. We were all moved up here, and that was a disaster, because nobody could find us.
G: Up here? By here, you mean?
K: Up here, right here.
G: In this area here.
K: Right here. Uh-huh.
G: Where Programs is presently.
K: And that didn't work. So we went back downstairs.
D: You were going to say why it didn't work, though.
G: Why didn't it work?
D: Why didn't it work?
G: You said it was a disaster.
K: Nobody could find us.
D: Yeah, for the public. You weren't near a door.
K: We were not...we weren't anywhere. We were lost forever. And the poor Festival people that had to come and Joan Keate & John Davis 23
get their tickets were lined up along the door that was approaching the executive director. And they would sit on the floor, and Jack had to walk over them when he came out. So I think that gave him a little hint. It might have not been Jack then; I've forgotten. It might have been...no, I think it was Jack, and our Development Officer was Mrs. Maguire.
D: Uh, yes. Jack and Pat Maguire were a - quote - team.
K: Team. So that was...
D: But again, that was not...I don't think that was the first title, but it was...
K: No, I don't think it was. I don't think it was. And I ...so when we went back downstairs, when I got here Ruth Phillips was answering the phone. Or there was a lady that was in the Photographic Gallery that answered the phone that had big hair. And she...Kitty, Kitty was in the Business Office, Kitty Brown.
D: Kitty Brown...lot of phone calls...de facto, yes.
K: Right. And then Ruth was downstairs, who was out of the Business Office. But who was that lady that answered the phone? Oh, dear, dear, I can't remember her name. That was...she was the switchboard (switchboard in quotes)
K: operator down in what is now the Photo Gallery. Now why, I don't know. There were hardly any...there weren't too many changes on the floor. The plaster horse had just Joan Keate & John Davis 24
gone when I got here. The plaster horse with the cowboy on it.
D: Uh-huh.
K: And I remember Claudia's big flap - wanting to get rid of the log hauler and put in a buggy that she had ordered re-done.
D: That...
K: And that never happened.
D: No, it didn't happen.
K: Or the engine.
D: Or the engine.
K: I think she's still mad about that.
G: Tell me about the engine.
K: The engine, the steam engine.
D: The one that's on the floor.
G: Oh, the steam engine.
K: The one that's on the floor. She wanted to have a buggy - a restored Phaeton buggy - there that she'd had restored and... There haven't been many; the exhibit floor itself is...was pretty static. We rested on our laurels entirely too long. But we did get the cowboy exhibit from the Smithsonian, and that was exciting. And The Reach For The Sky was really, really fun. By that time...
G: Tell me about those two exhibits, because they were very big important exhibits for the Institute.Joan Keate & John Davis 25
K: Uh-huh. I'm sure that the demographic figures should still be hanging around. And if they're not, they should be. Talk to Barbara Harp about that. But by that time... who did Cowboy? Jim McNutt did Reach For The Sky.
D: The...well, no, on the contrary.
K: Who was the...?
D: The Cowboy exhibit was the one that was largely researched by the Smithsonian.
K: Yes, I know. It was a Smithsonian exhibit.
D: Lon Taylor was curator for that.
K: Ah.
D: And the Institute supported that directly.
K: Did we buy it?
D: No, we're in the position of being one of the very, very few travelling sites for exhibits.
K: Travelling. We had the Jimenez statue outside.
D: David Haynes and I were in Washington D.C., both dealing with grants and also arranging that exhibit to come here during its installation and up to its opening.
G: What year was that? What year was that?
D: '82,'03, '02, '01 - early '80s, I think.
K: Uh-huh.
D: I would actually have to look at the copyright that was on the book; it was a major...
G: What do you remember about how the exhibit floor looked Joan Keate & John Davis 26
with the Cowboy exhibit?
K: I remember the booth at the back in the Hall of Mirrors. Um, with the plastic booth with the jukebox. And I remember the Jimenez statue, out in front, with the red eye in the horse. And it was actually not too discombobulating for the public as an exhibit as Reach For The Sky was. Reach For The Sky put us sort of out of the rental business for a while. But the Cowboy didn't. We had a lot of programming. The exhibit...it fit in very well if I remember correctly.
D: You all also...you and other people were responsible for some of the public contact, the openings and the receptions held with that.
K: Oh, yeah.
D: Do you recall any good stories about those? Because we had a lot of groups of people in here.
K: I'd have to...yeah, I'd have to look at the file. I have all those files, by the way. Let this go down forever. I'm the only one that's kept the files of every single one of those things that we did: all the openings, and the buildings that we opened and the exhibits that we opened. And I would have to look at that file. But it was a pretty exciting time. And the...another exciting thing we did was serve as one of the sites for a Smithsonian - what did they call it? Outreach?Joan Keate & John Davis 27
D: Uh-huh. Yes.
K: Remember when we had all those people here, and we were one of the venues. I have heard now that they are going to start that up again.
G: What do you mean by...?
K: It's...Patrick handled it. It was a Smithsonian Travelling Program, where you...in which you go to a city and you line up the venues with interest points, or with points of interests, to each institution. And they take the whole class and teach it the way they want to. And I've also got the notes on that, and it is one well done, first class operation, which is probably why they quit it. It was probably getting out of hand, monetarily...
D: ...too expensive...[inaudible].
K: And too expensive.
G: The Aviation Exhibit; we haven't talked about that.
K: When was that? '88?
D: It was '84 or '85...
K: What? Following the Cowboy that closely? D: Yes. That one was when, you know, we got the money from Southwest Airlines.
K: Yes.
D: And Research Department did the research and I did the design on that, oddly enough. That's when I left the Institute. Joan Keate & John Davis 28
K: I'll never forget the columns that held up the –
K: whatever was up there that was there for some purpose - I've forgotten what. Either panels or...there was a lot of video with that one. That was very impressive. And the old movies that Jim McNutt got and showed every Saturday; that was fun. It was invasive in the dome area, in that it took up most of the dome. So parties were restricted, but that was all right; we didn't have that many. I can look up and find out how many we had. But the spirit of the thing and the color coding and the design and the placement was very, very interesting. And it's given rise to the comment that when you go into our dome area and see it, every museum director in the country salivates - it's an empty space into which you can hardly wait to put your own thing. And we did, and we did, it was fun. It was a lot of fun, it was great. I don't know if our attendance - did it justify all that we had done? I've forgotten.
D: I was gone. It was...I didn't receive any bad notes ...[inaudible]
K: Yeah. I didn't...I don't remember it being invasive.
D: As far as I know, it was successful.
K: But it was terribly exciting, which shows that we can do things like that; it is not beyond us and probably should be done more of - more readily. If things weren't so darn expensive these days and - both in creating your own and Joan Keate & John Davis 29
we've got a whole exhibit floor to re-design.
D: Just a slight shift of gears. You all did some very
D: fine gatherings for the Bicentennial exhibit here. Do you still remember that one?
G: Tell me about the Bicentennial. I know nothing about that.
K: I don't remember.
B: Bicentennial...that would have been before you came. ...[inaudible].
K: That would have been '76.
D: '76.
K: What did we do then? I didn't even know this place existed in '76, except at Folklife Festival and bringing people down to, you know, just to tour. And there was no...well, like everybody else there wasn't any need for me to become any more involved.
G: Of the exhibits, either permanent exhibits or temporary exhibits, do you have a favorite? Something you really like? On the exhibit floor?
K: I'm crazy about the Jewish exhibit. Never, never enjoyed seeing anything so deadly become something so much fun. And fussing about the person that did it, which was - I was absolutely wrong - she did a wonderful job. I don't know if all the stuff she used...I think some of it could... wasn't, because it wasn't cost permissible. But the conceptJoan Keate & John Davis 30
...
G: Some of it is still in progress.
K: The concept is absolutely delightful. And it...and now K: that Hannah is down there, and it really brings it alive. It...I've seen a lot of people comment very, very favorably during the evening events. Unfortunately, conversely, the Tejano, which we worked on so hard and for such a long time, is so dimly lit and so sober that hardly anybody ever pays any attention to it. At least from my perspective of people going around the exhibit floor with a drink in their hand, which makes them a lot more susceptible to what catches their eye, rather than being hauled around by a docent. Or going around on your own without a drink. But they'll go...they'll go to the diorama; they'll completely pass up the Spanish-Colonial, which is one of the more interesting things up here. Really, intellectually, it is one of the more interesting. And then they'll go on, and they have not caught on to even why that house is here, let alone what it is. The...they love the jacal; they wish that they could see it, it's invisible. The other, it's a work in progress so we'll hope that these things can turn around. But the Jewish exhibit came out as such a bright and up-beat, up-scale, people-oriented exhibit, that I'd take it as a keystone and work from there.
G: Do you have any stories about visitors? Folks at Joan Keate & John Davis 31
night, folks during the day, do you have any stories about visitors to the Institute?
K: Oh, not many. They all blur. There was one wonderful lady who turned to her husband and said, "Well, Herman, I
K: just don't see why we can't have something like this in Ohio. We had people come through our state too." And I thought, yeah, they were coming through all the way to California. Well, we had lots of ethnic people come through our state too.” Said, "These Texans are just too much. They even have...they claim that all these people are Texans." And I said, "Yeah, we do; we really do. They're no longer Czechs or, you know, African-Americans; they're Texans all right." "Well, I just don't know if I like that or not." She was trying so hard. But they were fascinated, and spent an hour and a half here.
G: Do you remember one time you told me that you had typed the manuscript for one of Patrick McGuire's books?
K: Oh, ...[inaudible].
G: Can you tell me anything about publications, and your involvement with...[inaudible].
K: No, no, I wasn't allowed to do that; I did that sort of on my own hook. Was...Patrick didn't know how to write, well, pardon the expression, colorfully, about art. And I was a history of art major, and I knew how to throw that stuff all over the place. And how to talk about aesthetics;Joan Keate & John Davis 32
and you'd say aesthetics to James Patrick and he'd say, "Uh?" And because he was not that...he was a truthful writer and this had to be changed if he was going to publish.
D: Well said...[inaudible].
K: So, we had to adjust this and we did, and so it didn't
K: hurt him too badly, but then he wasn't very pleased, but it all came out. And it was a very nice book. Patrick had always written catalogues. He had never branched... tried to write about people and their art. And this, essentially, is what he had to do; and he was great about everything but talking about art. And he had some problems there. And I'm not saying I helped him, but I sure did give him an option; and he chose the one that was least painful to him.
D: I'll say you helped him. I'll say you helped all of us. You're being far too modest. We...
K: No.
D: We came down for your opinion on...many a time.
K: I hope it didn't go any further than that room.
D: It came out on the good side of many a research project.
K: But that was...yes, the publications I'm extremely fond of. I believed that...I just wish there were more of them. And I wish they were better paid. I wish that you made more money by publishing through a museum, for...from a Joan Keate & John Davis 33
university. I really do. Because the research is there; the people are there to do it, and it just...I think it is very, very valuable.
G: What are some of the big changes you've seen over the years that you've been involved with the Institute? Either in physical things or in directions or in attitudes?
K: Oh, I don't know. We've gone through some pretty bad periods. We've gone through some pretty good ones.
G: Talk a little bit about the bad periods. People always talk about the good - the positive things.
K: If I remember correctly, Quality...Quality Management, what was that called? TQM?
G: TQM.
K: That was sort of a disaster. And although I think we did...doing the M-Gaps - whatever those were - that got us some...that got us directed and got us getting money from the right places for the right things. So that was good. If that came out of that...did that come out of that? I don't remember. All that is beyond me. I believe that the direction has gone along pretty good. I think we look entirely too much at the day-to-day, and don't look at the...what the exhibit floor could become. That's why I'm very glad that that one committee - that was four years long, on re-designing the exhibit floor - and why I got on it. I thought that: number one, it was just going to talk Joan Keate & John Davis 34
about the exhibit floor. But it didn't. It talked about how to change the exhibit floor into a whole, ‘nother idea of presenting Texas history. And we're all going to have to change our way of looking at it a little bit, which it's high time. People are no longer compartmentalized; they must - it must grow and flow into more global thinking and thinking of man instead of thinking of man in a little
K: group. But I think it's getting along just fine. I think it's still healthy. I really do.
G: Talk a little bit about your work with the Exhibit Floor Task Group, because I know you were on that from the beginning to the end. And that was a...
K: Well, I shouldn't have been...
G: And that was a big challenge.
K: I was not a very big contributor. The best thing we did was get the history out. We got the history out from Henderson Shuffler. Why he created the place or what his idea was that could create a place like this. And then the second smartest thing we did and...was get John to come in and say how it was and how it was created. Then to try and follow that and expand on it, to go beyond where we are now, which is static exhibitory - just books on walls - and go into an inter-active experience, instead of a museum with books on walls. And that took years. We did a lot of travelling to different museums, which was invaluable. The Joan Keate & John Davis 35
one in Minnesota - Minneapolis - the A to Z Exhibit there; the Ellis Island in New York; the Brooklyn Museum in New York; the Children's Museum in New Orleans; the King Museum in Memphis; all these were visited as far as...with a criteria in mind, and fascinating...and the report that came out it should be attended to because it's worth it. It tries to give the ideas that we should work toward, without going down to every detail. We'll leave that to the K: researchers. I think that's what came out of that task group. And it was well worth it.
G: Just, like, two things more that I'd like to ask you. One is, if you were the king of the world or the executive director of the Institute, with unlimited resources, what would you do to this place?
K: I'd go ahead and change the exhibit floor. People... the question most frequently asked coming into this place is, “Why am I here? What is it?” We've got our little catch phrases that answer that and it's a pat answer. I would like for an exhibit to do that. I'd like for them to walk in and see what is...trying to find culture, ha ha... What is culture? Why are you here? The...just that one little panel. Why we are not Indians, you know, says a little of that. But I'd like to see more of that. And then from that on, go ahead and keep...go ahead with what the Exhibit Floor Task Group said. And I would definitely like Joan Keate & John Davis 36
to do it at one and two million dollar chunks at a time.
G: And last, is there anything that I didn't ask that you'd like to say about your time here at the Institute? Memories, stories...?
K: Oh, I've really loved it. It, it's as I say, it's very ...it's still a viable place; it's an exciting place. And heaven only knows, the people are as diverse as they are absolutely wonderful, and terribly frustrating to work with. And I wouldn't have it any other way.
G: Thank you, Joan.
K: You're welcome.
END OF TAPE 1, SIDE 2