![]() The Gibbes Museum of Art | |
![]() Interactive fullscreen map | |
Established | 1905 |
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Location | 135 Meeting Street Charleston, South Carolina |
Coordinates | 32°46′43″N79°55′54″W / 32.77861°N 79.93167°W |
Director | Angela Mack |
Curator | Sara Arnold, Pam Wall |
Website | gibbesmuseum |
The Gibbes Museum of Art, formerly known as the Gibbes Art Gallery, is an art museum in Charleston, South Carolina. Established as the Carolina Art Association in 1858, the museum moved into a new Beaux Arts building at 135 Meeting Street, in the Charleston Historic District, in 1905. The Gibbes houses a premier collection of over 10,000 works of fine art, principally American works, many with a connection to Charleston or the South.
The benefactor, James Shoolbred Gibbes, donated $100,000 to the Carolina Arts Association for the "erection of a suitable building for the exhibitions of paintings." The city did not receive the money until after the resolution of a will contest filed by nieces and nephews of Gibbes. Their case was heard in the state court of New York during 1900 and 1901. On December 6, 1901, the New York Supreme Court (the state's trial-level court) issued an opinion declaring that the gift to Charleston was valid. [1] [2]
After receiving the money in 1903, the Association hired Frank Pierce Milburn to design the gallery. He planned a Tiffany-style dome, Doric columns, and pediment-capped windows and doors. Milburn completed the drawings of the building in mid-1903, and a drawing of the proposed building was published in the Charleston Evening Post on June 5, 1903. [3] Notices were published seeking contractors' bids for the work starting in August 1903. [4]
In September 1903, H.T. Zacharias was selected as the contractor and received a contract for $73,370 for the building. [5] Zacharias started work on September 28, 1903, removing the remains of the South Carolina Agricultural Hall that had occupied the lot. [6] Although work on the foundations had begun already, a ceremony was held on December 8, 1903, to lay the cornerstone of the building at the northeast corner. [7]
The museum formally opened on April 11, 1905. The collection on display on the opening day included more than 300 pictures, many bronzes, and about 200 miniatures in addition to an "instructive collection" of Japanese prints. [8]
After closing in the early 21st century for an extensive two-year, $13.5 million renovation, the museum reopened to the public on May 28, 2016. In renovating the museum, the development teams used the original blueprints, discovered in the City of Charleston archives in 2008, to return the building to its 1905 Beaux Arts style layout. The first floor has classrooms, artist studios, lecture and event spaces, and a museum store. The rear reception area opens to the garden, part of Charleston's historic Gateway Walk founded by the Garden Club of Charleston. The entire ground floor of the museum is admission-free.
The museum's collections include the work of numerous artists with connections to Charleston, including Charles Fraser, William Melton Halsey, [10] Ned I.R. Jennings, Henrietta Johnston, Mary Roberts, Merton Simpson, [11] and Jeremiah Theus. The museum also has collected photographs by George LaGrange Cook, including photographs taken after the 1886 Charleston earthquake.
Elizabeth O'Neill Verner was an artist, author, lecturer, and preservationist who was one of the leaders of the Charleston Renaissance. She has been called "the best-known woman artist of South Carolina of the twentieth century."
Darell John Koons was an American painter. He was a member of the art faculty at Bob Jones University for forty years.
Mark Sloan is an American artist, curator, author, and museum director.
Horace Day, also Horace Talmage Day, was an American painter of the American scene who came to maturity during the Thirties and was active as a painter over the next 50 years. He traveled widely in the United States and continued to explore throughout his life subjects that first captured his attention as an artist in the Thirties. He gained early recognition for his portraits and landscapes, particularly his paintings in the Carolina Lowcountry.
Jeremiah Theus was a Swiss-born American painter, primarily of portraits. He was active mainly around Charleston, South Carolina, in which city he remained almost without competition for the bulk of his career.
Brian Christopher Rutenberg is an American abstract painter.
Merton Daniel Simpson was an American abstract expressionist painter and African and tribal art collector and dealer.
Willard Newman Hirsch (1905–1982) was an American sculptor.
James West Fraser is an American artist. One of the leading artists in the representational/En Plein Air tradition, Fraser has built his career on richly painted, atmospheric vistas of cities, coasts, and landscapes.
Matthew Clay Baumgardner was an American contemporary artist and National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artist Fellow, whose work was featured in multiple public and private collections including the Gibbes Museum of Art and the Greenville Museum of Art in Greenville, SC. After graduating with a master of fine arts degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1982, he was involved for over three decades in New York City's art scene.
William M. Halsey (1915–1999) was an influential abstract artist in the American Southeast, particularly in his home state of South Carolina. He was represented by the Bertha Schaefer Gallery in New York City (1948–53). His mural studies for the Baltimore Hebrew Congregational Temple were included in Synagogue Art Today at the Jewish Museum, New York City (1952). His work was included in the annual International Exhibition of Watercolors, the Art Institute of Chicago. He had work in the Whitney Museum's Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Sculpture, Watercolors and Drawings (1953). A mid-career retrospective was held at the Greenville County Museum of Art in 1972 and then traveled to the Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, South Carolina, and the Florence Museum, Florence, South Carolina.
Alice Ravenel Huger Smith was an American painter and printmaker. She was one of the leading figures in the so-called Charleston Renaissance, along with Elizabeth O'Neill Verner, Alfred Hutty, and Anna Heyward Taylor.
The Charleston Renaissance is a period between World Wars I and II in which the city of Charleston, South Carolina, experienced a boom in the arts as artists, writers, architects, and historical preservationists came together to improve and represent their city. The Charleston Renaissance was related to the larger interwar artistic movement known as the Southern Renaissance and is credited with helping to spur the city's tourist industry.
Anna Heyward Taylor was a painter and printmaker who is considered one of the leading artists of the Charleston Renaissance.
Alfred Heber Hutty was a 20th-century American artist who is considered one of the leading figures of the Charleston Renaissance. His oeuvre ranges from impressionist landscape paintings to detailed drawings and prints of life in the South Carolina Lowcountry. He was active in local arts organizations, helping to found both an art school and an etchers' club.
William Posey Silva (1859–1948) was an early 20th century American painter noted for atmospheric landscapes painted in a lyrical impressionist style. His work is associated with the Charleston Renaissance and with the art colony in Carmel, California, where he lived for thirty-six years.
Yvonne Pickering Carter is an American painter, performance artist, and educator. She has worked in media including watercolor and collage.
Mary Whyte is an American watercolor artist, a traditionalist preferring a representational style, and the author of seven published books, who has earned awards for her large-scale watercolors.
The Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art is a non-profit, non-collecting contemporary art institute within the School of the Arts at the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina. The HICA presents contemporary art exhibitions by emerging or mid-career artists. The Halsey is housed in the Marion and Wayland H. Cato Jr. Center for the Arts at 161 Calhoun Street, in the heart of downtown Charleston. The Halsey features two gallery spaces—the Deborah A. Chalsty Gallery and the South Gallery—together comprising 3,000 square feet of exhibition space. Mark Sloan was Director and Chief Curator of the Halsey from 1994 to 2020. Katie Hirsch became the director in April 2021.