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August Issue 2004
Pickens County Museum in Pickens, SC, Offers Smithsonian Exhibition About Barns
The Pickens County Museum in Pickens, SC, is
offering the exhibitions, Barn Again! Celebrating an American
Icon, and Barnstormin' the Carolina Upcountry, on view
from Aug. 7 through Sept. 17, 2004.
The Pickens County Museum is honored to have been selected as
the only Upcountry venue to host the Smithsonian Institute's traveling
exhibition, Barn Again! Celebrating an American Icon.
Barns - proud skyscrapers of rural America. Simple yet majestic
structures that lined highways and back roads. Strong warehouses
of varying shapes built by those who worked the land and used
them to store farming equipment, feed, seed and later, the season's
harvest. They were the heart and soul of the farm. As times changed
and the state moved from an agrarian society to a mechanized one,
many of these symbols of a simpler time were abandoned, fell into
ruin and nearly disappeared from the landscape.
Barn Again! Celebrating an American Icon is changing this.
Developed by the Smithsonian Institute's Traveling Exhibition
Service, this touring exhibit explores the barn as both a cultural
and agricultural icon. It examines the building as an architectural
structure and as a means of expressing beliefs about what our
country was and could be. It also explores the origin and fate
of the barn in its roles as warehouse, factory and legend.
In addition to the main traveling exhibit, the Pickens County
Museum is mounting the "sister" exhibition, Barnstormin'
the Carolina Upcountry as a multidisciplinary presentation
of photography and visual arts from Dale Cochran, Lynn Greer,
Marshall McCall, Olivia McGee, Gale McKinley, Beth Bullman Regula,
and others, along with historic accounts, folklore and "good
ol' stories" about the barns of the South Carolina Upcountry
and how they were, are and will be used.
Program highlights, in addition the ongoing exhibitions, includes:
On Aug. 14, 2004, at 1pm, Dr. Melissa Walker from Converse College
will conduct a free Oral History Workshop. This seminar will deal
exclusively with the recording of oral histories so to archive
community histories & resources.
Barn Again! Celebrating an American Icon and all related
programs are free to the public and funded in part by The Humanities
Council of SC, a state program of the National Endowment for the
Humanities; by the Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative; and by an
Anonymous Sponsor In Honor of Our Local Farming Community. Media
Sponsorship provided by WESC Radio 92.5.
For more information check our SC Institutional Gallery listings
or call the Museum at 864/898-5963.
Carolina Arts is published monthly by Shoestring Publishing Company, a subsidiary of PSMG, Inc. Copyright© 2004 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© 2004 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.