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July Issue 2003
Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, SC, Features Exhibition of City Portraits from Charleston Renaissance Period
From July 1, 2003 through Apr. 13, 2004, the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, SC, will present the original exhibition, The Lovely and the Shabby: City Portraits of the Charleston Renaissance Period, in the Museum's Charleston Renaissance Gallery.
From painters Charles Fraser and Elizabeth O'Neill Verner to playwright Dubose Heyward and architect Albert Simons, Charleston artists have been inspired to portray their city through written word and painted picture. The Lovely and the Shabby: City Portraits of the Charleston Renaissance Period creates a unique portrait of Charleston as captured by Charleston Renaissance artists and native son Albert Simons. An architect and author, Simons' book This Is Charleston presented the first comprehensive inventory of historic architecture in an American city. Published by the Carolina Arts Association 60 years ago, This Is Charleston continues to be praised as an unparalled achievement by scholars and architects alike.
The Lovely and the Shabby records the quasi-romantic nature of a city and its architectural past through works on paper, paintings and photographs, including images produced from the original negatives for This Is Charleston. A visual exploration of such dichotomies as artistic expression and historical documentation, renovation and restoration, lovely and shabby, the exhibition compares and contrasts the iconic and vernacular images of the city depicted by Charleston Renaissance artists and documented by Simons and his colleagues. The Lovely and the Shabby also brings to mind the recent controversies surrounding new phases of architecture in the "Holy City," suggesting that the dispute between modern and traditional, historical and contemporary architecture in the city of Charleston is hardly new, rather a long-standing debate.
For more information
check our SC Institutional Gallery listings, call the Museum at
843/722-2706 or on the web at (www.gibbes.com).
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