Oral history interview with William Barrow Floyd, 1981 July 28, Transcript
Oral history interview with William Barrow Floyd, 1981 July 28, Digital Sound Recording (Excerpt)
An interview with William Barrow Floyd conducted 1981 July 28, by Estill Curtis Pennington, for the Archives of American Art.
Floyd discusses his early research and publishing of The Barrow Family of Louisiana; his interest in early American portraiture up until the Civil War, specially Kentucky artists Matthew Harris Jouett, Joseph Henry Bush, and Oliver Frazer; the great need for more scholarship and study of early Kentucky art. Floyd also discusses his role as the curator of historic properties for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, restoring and curating Kentucky state buildings such as the Old Capitol Building and My Old Kentucky Home (also known as Federal Hill); his views of how Southern art and architecture are overlooked; and the comparison of Kentucky folk art versus a high art, also known as a Central Kentucky and Eastern Kentucky split.
Transcript is available on the Archives of American Art's website.
Originally recorded on 1 cassette.
William B. Floyd (1934-1999) was an art historian of Lexington, Ky.
This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and others.