Press Releases

Sally Van de Water Joins Staff at Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation
As Program Associate, Folk and Traditional Arts and ADA Coordinator

Baltimore, MD – Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation is pleased to announce the appointment of Sally A. Van de Water as Program Associate, Folk and Traditional Arts/ADA Coordinator.  Ms. Van de Water will be responsible for the Foundation’s folk and traditional arts programs, including the Folk Arts Outreach Project, and act as liaison between the Foundation and its traditional arts constituents.  She brings more than a dozen years experience working in traditional arts programming along the East Coast.  As ADA Coordinator, Ms. Van de Water will ensure access issues are integrated into the operations of the Foundation, and work with partnering state arts agency access coordinators throughout the mid-Atlantic region to address issues of mutual concern. Ms. Van de Water can be reached at 410.539-6656 x 107 or via email at sally@midatlanticarts.org.

As a folklorist, Ms. Van de Water has worked in a variety of settings ranging from private non-profits to municipal and state arts agencies.  Career highlights include administering the Pennsylvania Folk Arts Program through the Institute for Cultural Partnerships in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; consulting with the Georgia Council for the Arts and conducting site visits to document the Council’s traditional arts apprenticeship award winners; implementing Boston’s first city-based folk and traditional arts program; and developing place-based programming for Bayshore Discovery Project and The Nature Conservancy’s Delaware Bayshores Program in New Jersey.

Ms. Van de Water has served on the boards of the Middle Atlantic Folklife Association and the New Jersey Folklore Society.  She has organized or volunteered at the Smithsonian, Kentucky, Northwest, and Lowell Folklife Festivals, The Boston Arts Festival, and Delaware Bay Days.  She has served as a panelist for Southern Arts Federation, Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and Massachusetts Cultural Council.  A member of the American Folklore Society, Ms. Van de Water has presented at several of its annual meetings. 

The author of “Artists Creating Tradition: Authenticity in Tourist Art in Quepos, Costa Rica” (1999), Ms. Van de Water has also been a contributor to the Foundation’s online Forum.  She successfully nominated the Rosine, Kentucky General Store and Barn to the National Register of Historic Places, and served as an exhibit consultant for an African American veterans’ exhibit at the African American Heritage Center in Franklin, Kentucky.

Ms. Van de Water holds a B.A. from Bryn Mawr College in Folklore and Folklife and received her M.A. in Folk Studies from Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green.

Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation fosters and supports arts programming for the benefit of arts organizations, artists and audiences and encourages exchanges that link the arts resources of the mid-Atlantic region to the rest of the nation and the world.  The Foundation was created in 1979 and is a private non-profit organization that is closely allied with the region’s state arts councils and the National Endowment for the Arts. It combines funding from state and federal resources with private support from corporations, foundations, and individuals to address needs in the arts from a regional perspective.  The region includes nine states and jurisdictions:  The District of Columbia, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, the U.S.Virgin Islands, Virginia and West Virginia.