Published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, No Idle Hands is well-written and beautifully illustrated (with some 180 color photographs—many of them full page). It contains a foreword by Museum Director Khristaan D. Villela; an introduction by Laura M. Addison, the book’s editor and curator of the exhibition; and individual essays on tramp art by Addison, Leslie Umberger (curator of folk and self-taught art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum), and Eric M. Zafran (retired curator of European art at the Wadsworth Atheneum and a collector of tramp art, who donated his substantial collection to the Museum of International Folk Art). This volume superbly places the phenomenon of tramp art within broader contexts of social and cultural history. However, folklorists may be disappointed by the book’s ambiguity on the nagging question of folk art and folk groups.
