What’s Happening this August at the Gibbes Museum of Art

The Gibbes Museum of Art today announced their happenings for next month. See below for events and exhibitions rolling out in August.

Programming: 

Relief Block Printmaking Workshop with Susan Vitali, July 31 – Aug. 1, 2021

Redux Contemporary Art Center is collaborating with The Gibbes and printmaker Susan Vitali for this specially tailored two-day workshop. Participants will have the full experience of relief block printmaking, a guided tour of the Gibbes’ exhibition Lasting Impressions: Japanese Prints from the Read-Simms Collection and a hands-on workshop creating relief prints of their own designs.

Price: $240 members | $300 non-members *member pricing applies to Gibbes and Redux members

Art Collecting 101 with Michele Seekings and Alex Waggoner, August 11

Long-time Gibbes Museum of Art board member Michele Seekings, Partner at Spire Art Services and Alex Waggoner, former Gibbes Visiting Artist will lead this session offering guidance on how to begin collecting art. The event will take place in the Ruth and Bill Baker Art Sales Gallery where Waggoner’s current exhibition Habit Forming will be on display.

Price: $10 Society 1858 Members | $15 Non-members

Gallery Talk with Alex Waggoner, August 14

On view until Aug. 14 in the Gibbes Art Sales Gallery is Habit Forming a series of paintings by Alex Waggoner. On the last day of the exhibit, Waggoner will give visitors a tour and talk about what inspired each piece.

Price: Free and open to the public

Virtual Storytime at the Gibbes, August 19

In partnership with the Charleston County Public Library, the Gibbes is hosting a virtual storytime inspired by temporary special exhibitions and works in the permanent collection. The storytime will air on Facebook Live @theGibbesMuseum and is free and open to the public.

Price: Free

A Keen Eye: Collectors, Connoisseurship and Japanese Prints, August 19

World-renowned specialist in Japanese fine art and contributing author to the “Lasting Impressions” catalog, Sebastian Izzard, Ph.D., will join Gibbes curator Sara Arnold and author Stephen Hoffius to discuss the art of connoisseurship through the lens of Charleston collector, Motte Alston Read. Read assembled one of the earliest and largest collections of Japanese prints in the South during the first two decades of the 20th century a period dubbed the “Golden Age” of Japanese print collecting in America. The panel discussion will be followed by a book signing.

Price: $15 members | $20 non-members | $10 students/faculty with valid ID

Lasting Impressions Gallery Tour with Sebastian Izzard, August 19

Join Dr. Sebastian Izzard, contributing author to the Lasting Impressions catalog and world-renowned specialist in Japanese fine art, for an in-person guided tour of the exhibition. Space is limited and advanced registration is required.

Price: Free for members | included with museum admission for non-members

Literary Gibbes: A Book Club Discussion, August 20

Inspired by the special exhibition, Japonisme in Charleston: Alice Smith and Her Circle and the upcoming Light Effects: The French Impressionists, this event will discuss the exhibitions in the context of the book “The Hare with Amber Eyes” by Edmund de Waal. De Waal, a world-famous ceramicist, inherited a collection of 264 tiny Japanese wood and ivory carvings, called netsuke, acquired by Charles Ephrussi, a cousin of his great-grandfather, during the first wave of Japonisme in Paris in the 1870s. Charles Ephrussi, the model for Swann in Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, was an early acquirer of works by the Impressionists and appears in Auguste Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party. The book is a memoir of discovering the story of the netsuke and how they survived over five generations.

Price: Free

Watercolor Workshop: Lowcountry Marshland – Skies, Water, Plants, August 21

Led by Visiting artist Andrea Hazel, this workshop will teach participants the basics of watercolor painting. With guidance, participants will paint a landscape scene set in the Lowcountry focusing on the skies, water and plants of the region. Other topics to be explored include the presentation and conservation of watercolor paintings under glass and plexiglass as well as varnishing watercolor paintings and mounting on wood panels. To view the materials list, visit https://bit.ly/3iOnEOy.

Price: $85 members | $100 non-members

Art of Jazz: Geoffrey Dean Trio, August 25

As Charleston’s main visual arts museum, the Gibbes Museum of Art boasts a permanent collection that takes visitors from the colonial era through to the present. For the summer, the museum is partnering with Charleston Jazz for the Art of Jazz series featuring original compositions inspired by the works on view. On Aug. 25, visitors can enjoy music by Geoffrey Dean, a pianist, composer, and electronic music.

Price: $30 members | $40 non-members

Special Exhibitions:

Lasting Impressions: Japanese Prints from the Read-Simms Collection, Now – Oct. 3, 2021

For images, visit https://bit.ly/3b9b6Ps.

Lasting Impressions: Japanese Prints from the Read-Simms Collection will showcase 60 exceptional and rare prints amassed by Charleston collector, Motte Alston Read, and his sister, Mary Read Hume Simms of New Orleans, during the first decades of the 20th century, a period often referred to as the “Golden Age” of print collecting. The Read-Simms Collection was donated to the Gibbes in 1947 and reflects the full range of popular print subjects by master Ukiyo-e artists of the Edo period, from dramatic Kabuki theater actors, portrayed by Suzuki Harunobu and Tōshūsai Sharaku in the 18th century, to vibrant landscapes by Utagawa Hiroshige and Katsushika Hokusai in the 19th century.

The exhibition is accompanied by a beautiful, fully illustrated catalog featuring entries by Japanese fine art specialist, Sebastian Izzard Ph.D., and an in-depth essay on the collectors by Sara C. Arnold and Stephen G. Hoffius.

Japonisme in Charleston: Alice Smith and Her Circle, Now – Oct. 3, 2021

For images, visit https://bit.ly/2Ll7b7r.

Japonisme is a French term coined to describe the craze for Japanese art and design that first gripped the West in the late nineteenth century. In a companion exhibition to Lasting Impressions, the wave of enthusiasm for the Japanese aesthetic in Charleston will be explored through the works of native artist Alice Ravenel Huger Smith who was one of many American artists to react to the western dissemination of Japanese prints. A close friend and neighbor of collector Motte Alston Read, Smith had unfettered access to Read’s growing library of Japanese prints and she studied them intently. A watercolor specialist and one of Charleston’s most prolific artists, Smith discovered a shared reverence for nature in the work of Japanese artists, which greatly impacted her artistic trajectory. Japonisme in Charleston: Alice Smith and her Circle will feature works by Smith and other Charleston artists who embraced the tenets and techniques of Japanese art.

Leaving the Gibbes this Month:

Charleston Collects: Devotion and Fantasy, Witchcraft and the World’s End, Now – Aug. 15, 2021

For images, visit https://bit.ly/3oeHGmM.

This exhibition is a selection of art curated by Lawrence Goedde, Ph.D., professor of art history at the University of Virginia. The collection, which is comprised of objects created in the Low Countries and Germany between 1440 and 1590, showcases a world of contradictions and unease—whether the subject is a troubled Virgin Mary contemplating her young son, or a menacing group of malevolent figures inspired by Hieronymus Bosch, or Albrecht Dürer’s famous scenes from Revelations.

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