Arkansas Made

Over the past four decades, Historic Arkansas Museum’s Arkansas Made research team has worked tirelessly to transform the cultural image of Arkansas from a crude, backwoods pioneer state to one rich in artistic traditions. Our many years of meticulous research have revealed a multitude of artisans, cabinet makers, silversmiths, potters, fine artists, quilters, and more, working in communities all over the state. The original works of these artisan craftspeople have been the driving force of Historic Arkansas Museum’s mission to collect and preserve Arkansas’s creative legacy.

With tape measure, camera, and notepad in hand, Arkansas Made has traveled the state in search of original works of photography, furniture, and other artisan-made objects created in Arkansas or by Arkansans. This continuing research is a pioneering study of Arkansas’s artistic heritage. Historic Arkansas Museum is now the state’s premier repository of historic and contemporary Arkansas Made fine, decorative, and mechanical art.

The Arkansas Made research has been showcased through dozens of exhibitions highlighting Historic Arkansas Museum’s collection and other objects found in public and private institutions across the world. The museum has published two editions of Arkansas Made Vol. 1 & 2. These series of publications are part and parcel of Historic Arkansas Museum’s exhaustive investigation into the history of the state’s material culture past. Historic Arkansas Museum’s mission to document, interpret, and preserve the state’s creative legacy continues to be the guiding principle of Arkansas Made’s research for more than four decades.

The Arkansas Made works that Historic Arkansas Museum documents are vital to the preservation of the state’s rich and varied creative legacy. If you have a family heirloom you believe was made in Arkansas, please contact the Arkansas Made Researcher.

Arkansas Made Vol. 1 & 2

In 1991 and 1992, respectively, Arkansas Made Vol. 1 & 2 were published. These inaugural tomes contain hundreds of names and biographical details about artists and artisans working in the state up to 1870. Additionally, dozens of Arkansas Made works from private and public collections were showcased together for the first time. This survey resulted in the museum’s acquisition of hundreds of new Arkansas Made objects and recommitment to document Arkansas’s creative legacy.

In 2021, the second editions of Arkansas Made Vol. 1 & 2 were published and bring the work of Arkansas’s earliest artists and artisans forward to 1950. Two new additions to this study includes a new didactic survey of the material culture of both prehistoric and protohistoric Native Americans, our first Arkansans, followed by a first look at the state’s vernacular architecture of the nineteenth and early to mid-twentieth century. These expanded and revised volumes are the result of three decades of new research and discoveries.

These series of publications are part and parcel of Historic Arkansas Museum’s exhaustive investigation into the history of the state’s material culture past. Historic Arkansas Museum’s mission to document, interpret, and preserve the state’s creative legacy continues to be the guiding principle of Arkansas Made’s research for more than four decades.