The National Endowment for the Arts has awarded the Oregon Folklife Network funding to conduct folklife field surveys and documentation of traditions in the southern Oregon counties. Folklorists LuAnne Kozma and Douglas Manger will be conducting the fieldwork. Kozma will be in Lake and Klamath counties starting at the end of October/ beginning of November (back in the spring!) while Manger will be in Harney and Malheur counties in April but will be begin contacting individuals in November. Read on for more information about Douglas Manger.
Douglas Manger, has been working as a folklorist for almost twenty years. Early in his career, Manger served as director of the Northern Tier Cultural Alliance in Pennsylvania. As the alliance, he oversaw a rapid expansion of programming to include From Heart to Hand: Folk & Traditional Artists from Pennsylvania’s Northern Tier, a traveling gallery show which annually showcased artists’ work from six counties. Manger later managed the folk and traditional arts program at the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation in Baltimore overseeing initiatives across nine states and jurisdictions. At Mid Atlantic, Manger project managed the award-winning publication, From Bridge to Boardwalk: An Audio Journey Across Maryland’s Eastern Shore, and established the foundation’s NEA funded Mid Atlantic Folk Arts Outreach Project.
In 2007, Manger returned to his home state of Texas and founded HeritageWorks. His recent independent contract work includes a series of Texas-based regional folklife field surveys for the Institute of Texan Cultures in San Antonio. Manger will be conducting a folklife field survey for the Oregon Folklife Network in the southeastern sector of the state in the spring of 2014.
Manger is also a highly accomplished documentary photographer. His exhibit, Cinco Años, 2007-2011: A Photographic Retrospective of San Antonio’s International Accordion Festival, was presented at the San Antonio Central LIbrary art gallery in August of this year.