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August Issue 2004

Presbyterian College in Clinton, SC, Features Works by Eudora Welty and Works from the 1930s

The Elizabeth Stone Harper Gallery at Presbyterian College in Clinton, SC, announces the arrival of Passionate Observer: Eudora Welty among Artists of the Thirties, a traveling exhibition developed by the Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, MS, and circulated by International Arts & Artists, Washington, DC. The exhibition will be on view from Aug. 12 through Oct. 17, 2004.

This striking exhibition features over 100 works including photographs, paintings, drawings, and prints by notable American artists of the 1930s. At the center are Eudora Welty's dramatic photographs of Mississippi, Louisiana and New York during the Great Depression. Welty's images from this time period are placed alongside works by artists such as Edward Hopper, Thomas Hart Benton; photographers Berenice Abbott, Margaret Bourke-White, Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn; and Southern artists Walter Anderson, William Hollingsworth, Marie Hull, and Karl Wolfe. Such placement allows the viewer to compare Welty's artistic motivation with visual interpretations of her contemporaries from this period.

Renowned author Welty was born in Jackson, MS, in 1909 and was a life-long resident until her death in 2001. Her interest in photography was further nourished through her acquaintance with other Mississippi artists, such as Marie Hull, Karl Wolfe, William Hollingsworth, and Jay Lotterhos. Both a compassionate observer of the world and a passionate image maker, Welty used the camera much like she used language - to document the economic instability and prevailing personal hardship experienced by the Great Depression.

As the Great Depression deepened a need to look at and define the country's character, artists nationwide focused on the activities and patterns of everyday life in America. While some artists chose to critique it, some to glorify it, and others simply to show it, this collective focus was known as the American Scene Movement, which virtually produced a self-portrait of the nation during the trying times of the 1930s. Some of the artists were social realists, like Edward Hopper, whose works illuminated urban societal problems. At the same time, Regionalists, such as Thomas Hart Benton, were intent on creating authentic American art by depicting experiences of rural America.

While Welty and fellow artists in Jackson did participate in the American Scene Movement, they did not indulge in the overt patriotism that the style evoked in many of the nationally known artists of this time period. Rather, Welty's photographs taken during the Great Depression are evidence of her optimism about the human spirit and pride in the South. It is through her words and pictures that one shares in Welty's celebration of her home and her people. With Welty's discerning artistic vision, she captures many aspects of life during this period, confirming why she was known as the 'ultimate passionate observer of her time.' More than just a chronicle, Welty's photographs, like her celebrated story writing, reveal the courage and dignity of the American people during this pivotal era.

In addition, the exhibition features the work of the first woman photojournalist who worked during this period, Margaret Bourke-White, as well as five photographers who worked for The Farm Security Administration (FSA) during the 1930s. The black-and-white photographs taken by artists Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein, Ben Shahn and Marion Post Wolcott feature farm life in Mississippi during the Great Depression are a landmark in the history of documentary photography. The FSA photographs, which portrayed the disheartened, impoverished state of the nation, side by side with those of Eudora Welty emphasize her compassionate understanding of humanity and awareness of the resilient American spirit.

Passionate Observer: Eudora Welty among Artists of the Thirties originated at the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson, in the spring of 2002. The exhibition is traveling under the auspices of International Arts & Artists. The tour opened with a solo presentation of Eudora Welty's photographs at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, in Oct. 2003 through Feb. 2004. The exhibition also traveled in full to the R. W. Norton Art Gallery, Shreveport, LA, and will later travel to the Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, GA, from Sept. 2005 through Oct. 2005; and Davenport Museum of Art, IA, from May 2006 through July 2006.

For further information check our SC Institutional Gallery listings, call the gallery at 800/476-7272, ext. 8523 or at (www.presby.edu).


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