CHARLESTON, S.C., March 25, 2019 – The Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston’s premier art museum, has been awarded a South Carolina Humanities grant, the second major grant awarded to the museum this fiscal year. The museum will receive $6,400 from SC Humanities to support the upcoming special exhibition Rauschenberg in Charleston. In September 2018, the museum was awarded a $10,000 grant from The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to support its high school-level arts outreach program, It Starts with a Dot.
“We are thrilled that our work is being recognized by these prestigious organizations through grant funding,” said Angela Mack, The Gibbes Museum of Art’s executive director. “The Gibbes strives to display art that gives visitors a sense of Charleston’s rich cultural heritage, and the Rauschenberg exhibit will do just that. Our It Starts with a Dot program allows local students from diverse backgrounds access to our collections that features quintessential Charleston art.”
The SC Humanities grant will support research and planning for the upcoming special exhibition Rauschenberg in Charleston, on display at the Gibbes September 6, 2019 – January 5, 2020. Long before Robert Rauschenberg became one of the 20th century’s most influential American artists, he found much of his inspiration through the lens of his camera. Rauschenberg’s first experiences with photography were in the South as a student at Black Mountain College between 1949 and 1952, and Charleston was one of his earliest subjects. He was reunited with the city in the early 1980s for his monumental photography project In + Out City Limits. The upcoming exhibition revisits a selection of Rauschenberg’s Charleston photographs taken between 1952 and 1981 and examines their appearance in several of the artist’s later works.
In fall 2018, the Gibbes received an NEA grant to support It Starts with a Dot. The program is a collaborative project between graduate students in the College of Charleston’s Creative Writing Program and teachers at St. John’s High School, a Title I institution located on Johns Island, that provides access to artwork at the Gibbes to inspire students across all disciplines to explore their lives through a creative lens.
About the Gibbes Museum of Art
Home to the Carolina Art Association, established in 1858, the Gibbes Museum of Art is recognized among the oldest arts organizations in the United States. Housing one of the foremost collections of American Art from the 18th century to the present, the museum’s mission is to enhance lives through art by engaging people of every background and experience with art and artists of enduring quality and by providing opportunities to learn, to discover, to enjoy and to be inspired by the creative process. For more information, visit www.gibbesmuseum.org.
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Media Contacts
Lou Hammond Group
Hannah Buffington / Lauren Van Liew
[email protected] / [email protected]
(843) 410-5306 / (843) 410-4688
Top Image: Charleston Street, 1952, By Robert Rauschenberg (American, 1925 – 2008); Gelatin silver print, 15 x 15 inches; ©Robert Rauschenberg Foundation
Published March 25, 2019