Check out What’s Happening this May at the Gibbes Museum of Art

The Gibbes Museum of Art has several happenings coming up in May. Below you can see a list of select events and exhibitions rolling out next month.

Programming: 

Art Journaling, May 1

Visitors are invited to get comfortable with the creative process during this in-person workshop with Anna Boyer. Beginners and experienced artists alike will have the chance to draw, paint, write and collage inside sketchbooks and take home the tools to continue their creative practice.

Price: $60 members | $70 non-members

Intergenerational Illustration Workshop with Clare Pernice, May 2

This fun, educational workshop with storybook illustrator Clare Pernice is designed for grandparents (or parents) to join their young artist, ages 8-11 and experience the joys of storybook illustration. All materials are included and registration is for one adult and one child. Additional adults and children can be added separately.

Price: $100 members | $120 non-members | $40 additional adult/child

Lasting Impressions with Curator Sara Arnold, May 6

Guests can explore the special exhibition of Japanese art, Lasting Impressions: Japanese Prints from the Read-Simms Collection, with Gibbes Museum curator, Sara Arnold. The tour will be streamed through Facebook live @theGibbesMuseum.

Price: Free and open to the public

Punch Needle Workshop, May 8

Local artist Daisy McClellan will walk participants through the traditional embroidery technique and meditative craft of punch needling. No prior experience is required as guests will learn the best skills to get started, including how to thread a punch needle, stretch a frame and tips and tricks for turning the piece into a wall hanging, pillow, purse, trivet and more. All materials are included.

Price: $150 members | $180 non-members

Literary Gibbes Book Club Discussion, May 14

Inspired by the special exhibition, Lasting Impressions: Japanese Prints from the Read-Simms Collection, this event will discuss the exhibition in the context of the book “An Artist of the Floating World.” Authored by Nobel Prize-Winning British author, Kazuo Ishiguro, the book is set in post-World War II Japan and is narrated by Masuji Ono, an aging painter, who looks back on his life.

Color Theory 101: Acrylic Painting, May 15

Using acrylic paints, students will walk through the basics of color mixing and the color wheel with Anna Boyer. The workshop includes a series of small paintings allowing each participant to take home a piece of original art and a greater understanding of color theory. All materials are provided.

Price: $60 members | $70 non-members

Charleston Renaissance Walking Tour, May 15

Inspired by Japonisme in Charleston, this walking tour allows participants to walk in the footsteps of Alice R. H. Smith and other artists of the Charleston Renaissance. Sue Bennett of Walk Charleston, LLC., will lead this tour beginning and ending at the Gibbes. Guests will see Smith’s work on display at the Gibbes and explore the places and personal stories behind her practices.

Price: $50 members | $60 non-members

Relief Block Printmaking Workshop with Susan Vitali, May 15

The Gibbes in collaboration with Redux Contemporary Art Center is offering a special two-day workshop inspired by the exhibition, Lasting Impressions. Participants will have the full experience of relief block printmaking as well as a tour of the exhibition.

Price: $250 members | $300 non-members

For Which it Stands: Landscapes of the Japanese American Experience, May 22

This virtual town hall-style Zoom with local artists and community stakeholders will address questions of identity, community and the American experience. The work of artist Emily Hanako Momohara centers around issues of identity, immigration, and social justice. Her work probes her own family narrative, the transmission of cultural traditions, and allows participants to critically reflect on the diverse experience of immigrants to America.

Price: Free but requires advanced registration

Special Exhibitions:

Lasting Impressions: Japanese Prints from the Read-Simms Collection, April 30 – October 3, 2021

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 catalogue 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, April 30 – October 3, 2021

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.

Charleston Collects: Devotion and Fantasy, Witchcraft and the World’s End, through June 27, 2021

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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