As an intern reporting to Sara Arnold, Curator of Collections, I spent the fall at the Gibbes adapting text from the book The Life and Art of Alfred Hutty: Woodstock to Charleston for the exhibit The Art of Alfred Hutty: Woodstock in Charleston. Below are my seven reasons this show is one not to miss:
1. Numbers don’t lie! A banner number—over 400—Gibbes members who came out for the opening of the retrospective cannot be wrong…
2. Alfred Hutty was a foremost figure of the Charleston Renaissance. In the second quarter of the twentieth century, a period with more than it’s share of cataclysmic activity around the world, the Holy City was a hotbed of artistic activity, both home-grown and migrant.
3. Yet, Hutty is UNLIKE many Charleston Renaissance artists. Non-native Alfred Hutty (American, 1877–1954) drew attention to scenes and subjects that his local contemporaries did not. One such subject… the Jenkins Orphanage Band.
4. Hutty was prolific! In his lifetime Hutty produced over 230 works in print, and countless watercolors and oil paintings.
5. The artist’s technical acuity won him high acclaim. Hutty co-founded the Charleston Etcher’s Club and was the first American inducted into the prestigious British Society of the Graphic Arts, amongst other high praise.
6. Genius use of tonality. “Day’s End,” with its exemplary use of dark and light is a must see painting.
7. Scale and Reach of the works on view. This is the largest show of the work of Alfred Hutty that has ever been mounted. This show will travel beyond the Lowcountry to Greenville County Museum of Art (May 15–July 15, 2012) and the Morris Museum of Art (August 4–October 28, 2012).
—Susan Kridler, Gibbes Museum Intern and guest blogger
See more works by Alfred Hutty in the Gibbes Collection by visiting our online collection database.
Published February 22, 2012