Folk Art Center

The Folk Art Center is a museum of Appalachian arts and crafts located at milepost 382 on the Blue Ridge Parkway near Asheville, North Carolina . It also houses offices for three separate Parkway partners: the Southern Highland Craft Guild , the National Park Service , and Eastern National (known as EN ). The Center, a cooperative effort between the Southern Highland Craft Guild, the National Park Service, and the Appalachian Regional Commission , features many one-of-a-kind handmade crafts and is the most popular attraction on the Parkway, seeing a quarter of a million visitors per year. Opened to the public at its current location in 1980, the Center contains three galleries, a library, and an auditorium, and also houses the Eastern National bookstore and information center. Admission is free. One of the Center's main attractions is the Guild's century-old Allanstand Craft Shop, changing exhibitions in galleries from its permanent collection of 3,500 pieces of craft objects dating back to the turn of the 20th century. The Center also features an exhibition of traditional and contemporary southern Appalachian crafts.