January Issue 2002
McKissick Museum in Columbia, SC, Details 300 Years of Jewish Life in SC
It may be called the "buckle" on the Bible Belt by some, but SC has an amazingly rich Jewish heritage, as South Carolinians soon will discover Jan. 13 when the University of South Carolina in Columbia, SC, launches a major exhibition on the history of Jewish life in the Palmetto State. The exhibition will remain on display through May 19, 2002 at McKissick Museum before embarking on a two-year tour that will take it to the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, SC, Yeshiva University in New York and the Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte, NC.
Two hundred years ago, Charleston was the cultural capital of Jewish America, home to more than 500 Jews who helped shape the economic, political and social future of the state and the new republic. SC was home to Francis Salvador, the first Jew in the Western world elected to public office. He also was the first Jewish patriot to die in the American Revolution. SC also is the birthplace of Reform Judaism in the United States.
"This is an exhibit not only about Judaism but also about SC history," said Lynn Robertson, director of McKissick Museum, which won this year's prized Elizabeth O'Neill Verner Award in the arts. "It's the story of how an ethnic community defined itself and adapted to a new culture."
Co-sponsored by the Jewish Historical Society of SC and the College of Charleston, with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the McKissick exhibit, ...A Portion of the People: Three Hundred Years of Jewish Life in South Carolina, features more than 200 portraits, photographs and decorative, household and ritual objects, including many pairs of candlesticks, which figure so prominently in Jewish tradition. The stories that these objects tell are brought to life for visitors through accompanying text panels and audio of oral histories from Jewish South Carolinians.
"It has been a powerful tenet of Southern Jewish life that Jews should not be vocal and call attention to themselves," said Eli N. Evans, writer and president of the Charles H. Revson Foundation and author of the exhibition catalog's preface. "But here is a public celebration of Southern Jewish history, with bold assertions of the vital role played by Jews since the first days of European settlement; here is a willingness to explore the shadows as well as to celebrate the sunlight. It ("...A Portion of the People") is about SC, to be sure, but it is also about the Jewish story in America, brought to life through an enormous undertaking of research and imagination."
The exhibit traces the history of SC Jews, from the early emigration of people of Spanish and Portuguese descent in the 1600s to later migrations of Jews from eastern Europe. It explores their determination to become Southerners while preserving their religious and cultural traditions. Portraits of prominent Jews recall their contributions to business and politics, while precious artifacts and memorabilia detail cultural and religious beliefs and practices. In size, scope and importance, says Robertson, "...A Portion of the People is an extraordinary exhibit."
In its own way, each object contributes to the unfolding story of Jewish life in SC. ...A Portion of the People displays a remarkable group of objects, many never seen in public. The curatorial challenge has been to infuse these things with the emotional power that their owners invest in them - to let the objects tell their stories," said Dale Rosengarten, exhibition curator.
"Their story shows us how one people made their way in a new world by adopting new traditions without letting go of everything old," Robertson said. "Its lessons of tolerance and adaptation are as relevant today as they were for the first Jews who settled in SC nearly 300 years ago."
The exhibit at a glance:
-First Families: features a gallery of portraits
from the 18th and 19th centuries.
-One Great Political Family: documents the state's first Jewish
citizens and includes a selection of small watercolor portraits
painted on porcelain and ivory.
-This Happy Land: focuses on the ritual aspects of Judaism and
the birth of Reform Judaism in Charleston.
-Plantation Life: explores the life and times of the Jewish gentry.
-The Moving Frontier: details 19th-century immigrants and tracks
dispersion of Jews across SC and the region.
-The Lost Cause: features portraits, photographs and memorabilia
from Civil War and Reconstruction eras.
-Little Jerusalem: displays artifacts from the old country and
from Charleston's immigrant neighborhood.
-The Poliakoff Store: replicates the shoe department from a Jewish-owned
store in Abbeville, which was in business for 100 years.
-Pledging Allegiance: provides a heightened sense of American
identity during the world wars.
-Of Blessed Memory: is a tribute to members of South Carolina
families who remained in Europe and died in the Holocaust, featuring
photographs and a memorial display of candlesticks.
-Palmetto Jews: a new photo essay by Bill Aron and a look at contemporary
life in the state.
The McKissick exhibition is the product of a partnership formed by the museum in 1994 with the College of Charleston and the Jewish Historical Society. The partnership led to the collaborative Jewish Heritage Project, which aims to help the state's Jewish community conserve and interpret its history and to increase public awareness of SC's ethnic diversity and legacy of religious tolerance. The exhibition is a result of the project. More than two dozen foundations, agencies, corporations and individuals provided the financial support necessary for exhibit research and development. Major contributors include the NEW Bank of America, the Jesselson Foundation and the Maurice Amado Foundation.
For more information check our SC Institutional Gallery listings, call the museum at 803/777-7251, or visit their web site (http://www.cla.sc.edu/MCKS/).
Mailing Address: Carolina Arts, P.O. Drawer
427, Bonneau, SC 29431
Telephone, Answering Machine and FAX: 843/825-3408
E-Mail: carolinart@aol.com
Subscriptions are available for $18 a year.
Carolina Arts
is published monthly by Shoestring
Publishing Company, a subsidiary of PSMG, Inc.
Copyright© 2002 by PSMG, Inc., which published Charleston
Arts from July 1987 - Dec. 1994 and South Carolina Arts
from Jan. 1995 - Dec. 1996. It also publishes Carolina Arts
Online, Copyright© 2002 by PSMG, Inc. All rights reserved
by PSMG, Inc. or by the authors of articles. Reproduction or use
without written permission is strictly prohibited. Carolina
Arts is available throughout North & South Carolina.