Artist Carol Bove on Curating Legendary Polymath Harry Smith

The Art Angle · Sep 21, 2023 · 45m

Harry Everett Smith is an odd figure to come across in an art museum. That's because he's not known primarily as a visual artist at all. For most, Harry Smith is probably best known as the compiler of the legendary Anthology of American Folk Music, a landmark collection of early recordings published in 1952, which became a huge influence on the folk music revival and through that, on rock in the 1960s.

Smith was born in 1923 and died in 1991, and his biography reads like a who’s who of cultural icons. He was a big figure in the Beat Generation and a close friend of Allen Ginsberg, appeared in…