The International African American Museum (IAAM) is home to 12 permanent exhibitions which feature more than 150 historical objects, 30 works of art, nearly 50 films and digital interactive experiences which bring history to life. It’s a groundbreaking museum that certainly bears multiple visits — but a particularly exciting reason for Charlestonians to regularly stop in is the museum’s special exhibitions gallery.
The special exhibitions gallery is a 3,000-square-foot space dedicated to temporary, rotating exhibits. It started off strong with its most recent presentation of the first museum solo exhibition by the Charleston-based visual artist Fletcher Williams III, a multimedia exhibition titled When it Rains, It Shines, on view now until Dec. 3.
The IAAM recently announced its next three special exhibitions — a variety of historical, immersive and artistic displays which expand upon the museum’s core offerings, said Martina Morale, director of curatorial and special exhibitions at the IAAM.
She added that the coming exhibitions will include traveling shows curated by other leading institutions, like next year’s Ming Smith retrospective, Feeling the Future, as well as exhibits originated by the IAAM like When it Rains, It Shines.
Coming exhibitions
Opening Dec. 14 and on view until Jan. 15, 2024, the internally produced exhibition Creative Gathering: A Space for Gathering, Fellowship, and Reflection is an exhibition curated from the permanent collection of the IAAM. Morale said it will include contemporary art and historical objects and offer meditative spaces.
“We are really excited to curate something where we can show items that are not currently on view from our permanent collection and create space for dialogue,” she added.
American photographer Smith’s show Feeling the Future will kick off the museum’s 2024 exhibitions. Born in Detroit 1979, Smith is the first African-American female photographer whose work was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The exhibition travels to the IAAM in 2024 from Jan. 31 through April 28 from the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, where it first opened in September.
The retrospective will explore the artist’s “unparalleled and under-recognized career from the early 1970s through the present,” Morale said. Smith’s practice, grounded in portraiture, serves as a passionate record of the cultural movements she witnessed and participated in.
“The exhibition will feature work from the last five decades — and so you’ll see all of these cultural moments that she’s witnessed,” Morale said, adding the exhibition will explore themes such as Afrofuturism, Black cultural expression, representation and social examination.
After Feeling the Future, the IAAM opens in May another internally produced exhibition which talks about the elusivity of “freedom” as a destination: Follow the North Star: Freedom in the Age of Mobility Throughout African American History, which is slated to run May 23 through Nov. 3, 2024.
The exhibition explores the search for freedom through three distinct perspectives, Morale said. “It really looks at transportation, The Great Migration and spirituality and imagination.
It asks, ‘Where are we going mentally?’ We’re talking about metaphysical travel, storytelling, whether it was physically or mentally. From the Montgomery bus boycotts, to Afrofuturist visions of other planets, you talk about visions of other places and planets through this lens of mobility.”
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