Exhibition Review

Like Charlie Chaplin, whose movies he loved as a child, Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) was always cleverer than he let on. Behind his cornpone humor and deceivingly simple songs lay a rich and complex personality surging with playfulness, ideas, and paradoxes. Indeed, Guthrie's easygoing manner belied his staggering industriousness: he penned more than three thousand songs, a newspaper column, a widely read autobiography, and countless unpublished poems, prose pieces, and letters. He also had radio shows, made more than three hundred sound recordings, and created innumerable works on paper—of which more than six hundred drawings, paintings, and cartoons survive. And if his mind and his hands were busy, so too were his feet: as a Dust Bowl refugee, a hobo, a journalist, and a labor activist, Guthrie traveled the country with an insatiable wanderlust. Eventually visiting every state in the nation, he took inspiration from the road, the people he met, the stories they told, and the songs they shared.

     All this dizzying activity has been deftly ordered and historicized in the traveling exhibition "This Land Is Your Land: The Life and Legacy of Woody Guthrie," organized by the Woody Guthrie Archives and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Services (SITES) in association with the Smithsonian's Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. Woody's daughter Nora Guthrie, executive director of the Guthrie Archives, served as exhibition curator, collaborating closely with SITES project director Marquette Folley. The result is a celebration—a tribute to a man, his life's work (artistic and political), and his lasting impact. Drawn primarily from the Guthrie Archives and the Smithsonian's Folkways Collection, the exhibition comprises a wide range of media and materials, including manuscripts, diaries, photographs, musical instruments, record albums, works on paper, sound recordings, and a video—many on display for the first time. In addition, Guthrie's song lyrics and autobiographical writings are used extensively in the wall text and labels. "Woody's work is our guide," the introductory panel explains; "His essays, poems, lyrics, and drawings . . . offer glimpses into the artist's life and narrate his life story."

     Befitting a celebration of such a renowned peripatetic, visitors wander or ramble through, around, and among the different parts of Guthrie's life. As viewed at the National Museum of American History, the physical layout consists of eight freestanding multisectioned display cases, a small video theater at the end, and framed works on paper covering the surrounding walls of the exhibition space. Two of the display cases incorporate listening stations, each with a few well-chosen selections accompanied by helpful laminated transcriptions. In addition, the prominently displayed visitor response cards at the exit and a wall-mounted display case with a changing sample of past responses help to give the exhibition a populist, interactive feeling. Aesthetically, the design of the exhibition suffers from an excess of competing visual styles, and the chronological order of the display cases is difficult to perceive and follow. Such design problems notwithstanding, the varied, subject-driven presentation makes the exhibition attractive and accessible both to those already familiar with Guthrie and to those, especially young people, who know little or nothing about him. . . .