SYMPOSIUM 
JONATHAN GREEN: SEEKING ROOTS; FINDING SPIRIT

GIBBES MUSEUM OF ART 
135 Meeting St., Charleston
SUNDAY MARCH 2 
3:00 – 5:00 PM

 

This symposium brings together four remarkable and interesting personalities to reflect on Seeking, on Jonathan Green’s work, on the influence of Gullah culture in the Lowcountry, and more generally on southern art in the context of our times. Following presentations and discussion by the panelists, audience participation will be encouraged. A reception will follow.

Admission is $30; seating is limited
Tickets may be purchased online at www.gibbesmuseum.org/events
or at the door.
Sponsored by: The Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelly Foundation

 

The panel moderator is Ronne Hartfield, a former Dean of The Art Institute of Chicago where Jonathan trained, and a mentor to him in his years of study. Hartfield has taught at Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Chicago, and she led Urban Gateways in Chicago to become a national model for artist training and community arts education. She is an internationally recognized expert in arts and multicultural education. Hartfield serves on the boards of several foundations and educational institutions.

Emory Shaw Campbell was born and raised on Hilton Head Island when it was still one of the sea islands that are home to the Gullah people and culture — long before it became a resort community. He has spent a lifetime working to preserve and nurture that culture, having been involved, for example, in translating the Bible into Gullah language. His work in reestablishing family connections between Gullah people and their ancestral homeland in Sierra Leone culminated in an historic ”Gullah Homecoming” with the president of Sierra Leone in 1989 at the Penn Center in Beaufort, where he was then Executive Director. In recognition of his pioneering work, he was honored as a “paramount chief” in Sierra Leone. Green has worked for many tears with the Penn Center, a foremost center for the preservation of African American culture.

Julia Norrell is a foremost collector of southern art. In a lifetime of collecting, she created an astonishing gathering of painting, photography, sculpture and art in many forms — all from the south. She was one of Green’s first collectors and also “discovered” several other important regional artists. Parts of her collection traveled to museums throughout the South as well as to the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. With roots in Arkansas, she says, “Growing up in the South, I witnessed inequity and dire limitations on freedom. I was one of those Southerners who loved the South but hated the irrationality, hated the cruelty, hated the ignorance disguised by arrogance.” Her collection and her shows enact this perspective.

Leslie King-Hammond is Dean of Graduate Studies at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. A true multi-tasker, she works as a creative artist having exhibited in New York and elsewhere, an art critic whose essays have focused on African American and women artists, and a curator for major exhibitions in New York and Miami. She is also an enthusiastic supporter of Jonathan Green’s work.