We recently – after deadline – received a press release about a major exhibition taking place in South Carolina. The exhibit, Tradition/Innovation: American Masterpieces of Southern Craft and Traditional Art, organized by the Southern Arts Federation is coming to the Sumter County Gallery of Art in Sumter, SC. It will be on view from Sept. 10 through Nov. 12, 2009.
First off I’ll state that I have not seen this exhibit, but I expect that is an excellent exhibition based on the artists involved and past exhibits organized by the Southern Arts Federation. The problem comes in execution and the concept of this basic “major” initiative.
The press release included this statement: “The Sumter County Gallery of Art will be honored as the only South Carolina venue for the Southern Arts Federation (SAF) touring exhibition, Tradition/Innovation: American Masterpieces of Southern Craft and Traditional Art, an ambitious exhibition that is part of the American Masterpieces program of the National Endowment for the Arts, a major initiative to acquaint Americans with the best of their cultural and artistic legacy, featuring more than 100 artworks created by 58 traditional artists and contemporary craftspeople, living and working in the South today.”
Well, at least that is from the nine southern states the Southern Arts Federation represents.
The Southern Arts Federation (SAF), headquartered in Atlanta, GA, is a consortium of nine Southern states (NC, SC, GA, FL, TN, KY, LA, MS AL) and their respective Arts Commissions. Tradition/Innovation: American Masterpieces of Southern Craft and Traditional Art is the largest, most ambitious touring exhibition ever coordinated by SAF. These efforts began over three years ago. Each member state has selected one venue in the state to present the exhibition. For South Carolina, the Sumter County Gallery of Art (SCGA) is the venue (recommended by the SC Arts Commission).
You would think with three years in the planning, someone could have gotten the press release to us by our deadline. But I’m not sure this exhibit was planned that well in South Carolina, North Carolina, or most of the other states for that matter. For one thing, I know the Sumter County Gallery of Art had a different exhibit planned during this time-frame – just six months ago. I won’t tell you which artists got screwed due to this three years of planning, but I’m sure they will be compensated for this disruption. They took one for the team.
Here’s the schedule for this exhibit: March – May 2008, Atlanta History Center, Atlanta, GA; June – August 2008, Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, Louisville, KY; October – January 2009, Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, TN; February – April 2009, Pensacola Museum of Art, Pensacola, FL; May – July 2009, Asheville Museum of Art, Asheville, NC; September – November 2009, Sumter County Gallery of Art, Sumter, SC; January-April 2010, Jule Collins Smith Museum Fine Art, Auburn Univ, Auburn, AL; July – October 2010, Louisiana Art & Science Museum, Baton Rouge, LA; and November – December 2010, Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art, Biloxi, MS.
If you look at this list and know anything about these states or at least a few of them – some of the host sites for this exhibition were in big major cities, capital cities, centrally located cities, and some are in some unusual locations – at least as far as a lot of people getting to see the “major initiative to acquaint Americans with the best of their cultural and artistic legacy.”
Sumter, SC, may be centrally located but it is not a place where many people go to see art exhibits. The Sumter County Gallery of Art is a great facility and they put on some really great exhibits, but people – art gallery and art museum visitors don’t travel there that much to see art. Granted, these same people in SC don’t travel far from home to go anywhere in SC to go see art. In North Carolina, this exhibit was shown in Asheville. I doubt many people traveled from Wilmington or Raleigh to see this exhibit – perhaps if the show was shown in Oct. and Nov., but it was shown in May – July. In Florida, the exhibit was shown in Pensacola – about as far away from most of the population in that state.
The point is – there is no way hosting this exhibit in just one location in each state, no matter how centrally located would provide people an opportunity to see an exhibit that is meant to “acquaint Americans with the best of their cultural and artistic legacy”. If this is such a major initiative, why not take the time to schedule this so it could have been seen in several locations and in each state’s biggest art venues? What’s the hurry? After all, they say they took three years to plan the exhibit.
And, don’t forget, this exhibit is “an ambitious exhibition that is part of the American Masterpieces program of the National Endowment for the Arts”. A regional part of a national program by our country’s top arts organization.
The artists included in the exhibit from South Carolina are: Alice Ballard, Clay Burnette, Philip Simmons (1912-2009), and Henrietta Snype. The artists included in the exhibit from North Carolina are: Elizabeth Brim, Cynthia Bringle, Vernon Owens, Mark Peiser, Richard Ritter, Kristy Higby, Billie Ruth Sudduth, Enrique Vega, Carol Welch, and Virgil Ledford.
There are a couple artists listed who will make some reader’s eyes open wide, but overall – they are excellent artists who would make any exhibit worth seeing. Those couple of artists are not my problem with this exhibit – I accept the selection of artists for these kinds of shows for what it is and who does it. The problem is execution and followthrough.
Like I said we didn’t receive this press release about this exhibit that starts on Sept. 10, 2009, until after the deadline for our Sept. ’09 issue of Carolina Arts – which was Aug. 12, 2009. But due to the importance of the exhibit I managed to make the change in our gallery listings in the back of the paper.
As of the posting of this blog entry – there is not one word about the exhibit on the SC Arts Commission’s website. I checked all places it might be hidden: Visual Arts Exhibit (just old news of exhibits over in Jan. 09), Works by SC Artists, Dates & Events, Press Room, and E-Publications. I even took the time to search the Arts Commission’s own events calendar – Art Daily – all 239 entries and not word about this exhibit and there were a lot of things listed taking place up to the end of this year and beyond.
But this is not new, the last show the Arts Commission did with the SAF didn’t get any publicity on the Arts Commission’s website until I pointed it out. And this is the group who presumes to instruct other arts organizations on how to do things.
Neither the Sumter County Gallery of Art or the Arts Commission placed this exhibit on Arts Daily. Remember – three years of planning and a major initiative. But I bet you it appears there very soon.
After searches on Google and Google News, the only item I found mentioning this exhibit in SC was posted on Nov. 6, 2007, on the State of SC’s Official Website for news, and it was an announcement of the selection of SC’s artists for this exhibit.
So with this kind of publicity – how are people even supposed to know about this exhibit – much less make an effort to go see it.
I’m giving it more publicity than they are and I didn’t receive any funding from the NEA or SAF to host this exhibit – but I can guarantee you that the Southern Arts Federation, SC Arts Commission and the Sumter County Gallery of Art did.
Now you can bet they will start beating the bushes for all the publicity they can muster after this hits the Internet and you can thank me for that – I’ve been down this road before. But we are less than three weeks away from the opening of this exhibit and I can tell you they are already too late for a lot of the publicity they should have had. And, we’re going into a very competitive time for publicity for the arts.
One last point – Harriett Green is the Director of Visual Arts at the SC Arts Commission.