From a media release

Leading Artists in the American South Confront Today's Issues
At The Gibbes Museum of Art

Landmark Group Exhibition at the Gibbes Museum of Art Honors the 15 Winning Artists of the 1858 Prize for Contemporary Southern Art

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CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA: Six more weeks remain to see this powerful group exhibition at the Gibbes Museum of Art, on view now until January 12.

The show is titled Celebrating the 1858 Prize for Contemporary Southern Art, and is the culmination of 15 years of one of the most prestigious art prizes in the Southeastern United States. The exhibition includes paintings, sculptures, video, textiles, photography, digital art, mixed media, and installations.

Clockwise from top: They Combined Beauty, by Stephen L. Hayes Jr. (2020 winner); Wave After Wave, by John Westmark (2012 winner); Lavender Notes, by Stephanie J. Woods (2021 winner); The Omen, by Leo Twiggs (2018 winner); Charleston, by Radcliffe Bailey (2010 winner); Hurtsboro, by Bo Bartlett (2017 winner).

This is the first time the Museum has created an original exhibition of this scope, featuring all of the winning artists from each year since the inaugural prize of 2008. 

The co-curators of the exhibition are Sara Arnold, Jordan Brown, and Brenna Reilley.

The 2009 Prize winner Stephen Marc (his artwork is pictured below) states: “It is invaluable to see how the South’s diverse cultural heritage and collective regional identity are creatively expressed through explorations of everyday life, historical references, and visions of the future.” 

Untitled (2002), by Stephen Marc, the 2009 Prize winner. Gibbes Museum purchase/partial gift by the artist.

The works in this group exhibition explore a striking variety of themes, including: resilience; cultural heritage; the African Diaspora; feminist theory; the relationship between humans and their environment; incarceration; and the physical, spiritual and artistic journeys these artists convey, with their creative strength to conjure hope.

The juried competition awards $10,000 each year to an artist whose work contributes to a new understanding of art in the South.

Each winner’s work is exhibited at the Museum for a full year.

“These artists have the power to illuminate how the past unfolds and impacts our present, a recurring theme in their works,” says Sara Arnold, Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Gibbes Museum of Art.

More exhibition programming continues with two new exhibition tours for the public to enjoy, on Dec. 11, and on Jan. 8. Both events feature intimate insider tours led by special guests who will share their insights about these artists, and their personal experiences in helping to steer the success of this competition.

The Gibbes Museum is a beacon in the American South since it was established in 1858, and is located in the heart of Charleston’s Historic District.  

The exhibition features 27 works by 15 Prize winners

• Sherrill Roland (2023 winner)
• Raheleh Filsoofi (2022 winner)
• Stephanie J. Woods (2021 winner)
• Stephen L. Hayes Jr. (2020 winner)
• Donte K. Hayes (2019 winner)            
• Leo Twiggs (2018 winner)
• Bo Bartlett (2017 winner)                    
• Alicia Henry (2016 winner)
• Deborah Luster (2015 winner)        
• Sonya Clark (2014 winner)
• John Westmark (2012 winner)         
• Patrick Dougherty (2011 winner)
• Radcliffe Bailey (2010 winner)             
• Stephen Marc (2009 winner)
• Jeff Whetstone (2008 winner)

Through the years, several works by winners and finalists have been acquired by the Gibbes. Some winners have received awards from the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Joan Mitchell Fellowship, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant.

Some are in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The National Gallery of Art, and Art Institute of Chicago.

“The Gibbes Museum of Art is thrilled to honor these leading Southern artists who are reshaping and redefining American art,” says Angela Mack, the President and CEO of the Gibbes Museum of Art.

“This artist-centric initiative builds ongoing museum relationships with these creatives, to tell their contemporary stories.” 

“These artists have continued to garner accolades regionally, nationally, and internationally. Our team at the Museum is deeply committed to spearheading this vital platform for Southern artists, and we are proud of this competition’s growing prominence over the past 15 years,” adds Angela Mack.

Artists from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia are eligible to apply. Read more details about the artists and finalists spanning the past 15 years of this competition at ‒ www.gibbesmuseum.org/1858-prize. 

The 1858 Prize for Contemporary Southern Art is presented by Society 1858, a member auxiliary group of the Gibbes Museum. This group of dynamic young professionals supports the Museum with social and educational programs tailored for up-and-coming art patrons.

Society 1858 takes its name from the year that the Carolina Art Association was established (the Museum's art collection, which began in 1858). 

The 2024 winner of the competition was recently announced, honoring the multi-disciplinary artist Demond Melancon. His work will be on view separately starting in February 2025, for a full year at the Museum.

This exhibition is also made possible thanks to the support of Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina, the South Carolina Arts Commission, the Jane Smith Turner Foundation, the City of Charleston, the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, and the South Carolina Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism.

In the spirit of the 1858 Prize, the Gibbes is launching new initiatives to support the next wave of Southern artists with a new professional development series in the Spring.

Highlights from the exhibition

Radcliffe Bailey (1968-2023) was the 2009 Prize winner. He was known for monumental assemblages, paintings, and prints that explore race, memory, music, and familial connections. 

Bailey created this large-scale mixed media painting titled Charleston (pictured bellow) using shipping tarpaulin as his canvas.

Installation photo of the artwork titled Charleston (2021), by Radcliffe Bailey, the 2010 Prize winner. Mixed media, flock, oil stick, acrylic paint on tarp with steel shelf supporting a tabby concrete block. On loan courtesy of the Estate of Radcliffe Bailey and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. Installation photo from the exhibition opening, by MCG Photography. 

Bailey's quilt-like patchwork of color shapes in the artwork titled Charleston alludes to themes of geographical displacement ‒ layered with text and imagery inspired by antique maps, family trees, travel logs, and Haitian vévé spiritual diagrams.

Near the center of the canvas is a block of tabby concrete, a building material used in the construction of homes and buildings along the South Carolina and Georgia coast prior to the Civil War. A mixture of lime, sand, water, and shell, tabby blocks were crafted by enslaved laborers.

Sonya Clark is the 2014 Prize winner. She is a fiber and mixed media artist. She works with strands of human hair, combs, coins, seed beads, and thin threads to give voice to the complexity of American identity and history. 

In Clark's artwork (pictured below), she utilizes seven Afro wigs and thread-wrapped combs, with the colors of the rainbow to honor and amplify diversity among Black women. 

Installation photo of For Colored Girls, A Rainbow (2020), by Sonya Clark, the 2014 Prize winner. Wigs, cast plastic combs, and wrapped thread. On loan from the artist and Goya Contemporary, Baltimore. Installation photo by MCG Photography, from the exhibition opening.

Clark's artwork in this exhibition is a tribute to the 1976 Broadway play for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf by Ntozake Shange.

The groundbreaking, award-winning play explores the lives, struggles, and resilience of Black women, featuring seven female actors identified only by the colors they wear.

Clark honors contemporary craftspeople like hairdressers, and notable African American figures. 

“Sonya Clark sculpts, shapes and winds thread into hair power, a thrilling metaphor.” ‒ Scott Wilson, The Visual Arts Journal

John Westmark is the 2012 Prize winner. His wife and two daughters are the true inspiration behind his work. After observing his wife using a pattern for a sewing project, his artistic vision took a new direction. Pictured below is his work Wave After Wave.

Wave Upon Wave (2014), by John Westmark, the 2012 winner. Acrylic, quilting pins, paper sewing patterns on canvas. Museum purchase.

Westmark's paintings depict courageous women, some portrayed as stoic martyrs and others as warriors engaged in conflicts of rebellion. 

Intrigued with the pattern design and the cultural meaning of the pattern itself, Westmark began reading feminist theory and creating collage studies with the sewing patterns. His intense exploration led to these dynamic, large-scale, mixed-media figurative paintings.

By utilizing sewing patterns to compose his female figures, Westmark creates anonymous yet powerful women that challenge the historical understanding of “women’s work.” 

Deborah Luster is the 2015 Prize winner. In 1988, Luster’s mother was murdered, and as a way of coping she turned to photography and became known for investigating violence, place, and prison. 

Pictured below is an installation photo from the exhibition, of her series titled Angola History Project (photos of the buildings and history of the notorious Angola Prison in Louisiana). 

Angola takes its name from an antebellum plantation where for generations thousands of enslaved people produced cotton and sugar cane. After the Civil War, cotton production continued through a convict leasing program. The property formally became a state prison in the early 1900s and today is one of the largest prisons in the country. 

Installation photo from the exhibition of the series titled Angola History Project, by Deborah Luster (photos of the buildings and history of the notorious Angola Prison in Louisiana). Archival pigment print. Loan courtesy of the artist. Installation photo by MCG Photography, from the exhibition opening.

In the 2017 photograph above by Luster, inmate Taece Defillo poses as Nurse Mary Margaret Daugherty in a play created by the prisoners. The original, real-life Nurse Daugherty was an Irish immigrant working at the prison in the 1950s who exposed the deplorable conditions at Angola, leading to much-needed reforms. 

Bo Bartlett is the 2017 Prize winner and is acclaimed for his large-scale paintings that explore American life and cultural heritage. 

Hurtsboro, by Bo Bartlett, the 2017 winner. Oil on linen (2021). Museum purchase with funds from an anonymous donor. 

Bartlett's large-scale painting Hurtsboro (pictured above) is inspired by his memory of hitchhiking as a teenager in the segregated South. Hurtsboro conveys the beauty of friendship, and the difficulties faced by Black men in America. 

Raheleh Filsoofi is the 2022 Prize winner.

For her multimedia installation Imagined Boundaries (pictured below) the artist invited more than 100 Charlestonians for video portraits she embedded into each of the boxes using iPads. Her video portrait subjects range in age from three months to 92.

The view portals reference Iranian pottery. Her work synthesizes socio-political statements, here interconnecting Southerners to Iran’s culture across boundaries. 

Detail view of the multimedia installation Imagined Boundaries, by Raheleh Filsoofi. Commissioned by the Gibbes Museum of Art.

Filmmaker Jeff Whetstone won the inaugural Prize in 2008. He has explored the relationship between humans and their environment since he received a Zoology degree in 1990. 

His video The Batture Ritual examines the intersection of economy and ecology at a single point along the lower Mississippi River. The video installation and accompanying photographs vividly capture the rhythms of local families, fishermen, nature, and cargo ships.

• You can check it out at this link.

Leo Twiggs is the 2018 Prize Winner. The Gibbes first presented the work of Leo Twiggs almost 50 years ago, in a 1976 solo exhibition.

Twiggs was the first African American student to receive a Doctorate of Arts from the University of Georgia, and the first visual artist to receive the Elizabeth O’Neill Verner Award (Governor’s Trophy) for outstanding contributions to the arts in South Carolina. 

Sarah Remembered (1997), by Leo Twiggs, the 2018 Prize winner. Batik and mixed media paint on board. Museum purchase.

About the Gibbes Museum of Art

The Gibbes Museum of Art, a beacon in the American South for arts and culture since 1858 when it was originally the Carolina Art Association, is heralded as one of the earliest and most longstanding arts institutions in the United States.

The Museum’s collection spans 350 years, and features some of the country’s most celebrated artists ‒ including contemporary, modern and historical works. With world-class rotating exhibitions and a dynamic visiting artist residency program, the Gibbes is a southern museum with a global perspective.

The Museum’s mission is to enhance lives through art by engaging people of every background and experience with art and artists of enduring quality, providing opportunities to learn and discover, to enjoy and be inspired by the creative process. Museum hours and visitor info at: www.gibbesmuseum.org/visit   

The Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston SC