When the Gibbes Museum of Art embarked on its $13.5 million renovation in 2016, one of the goals of the project was to re-dedicate spaces to education and community engagement.
The 2016 opening of the renovated museum revealed two on-site studios, two classrooms and a lecture space. That same year, the museum launched the visiting artist program, a six-week residency with eight available spots open to artists across the U.S.
Seven years later, the program is seeing an expansion and reevaluation of its offerings.
Under new leadership
The new curator of the visiting artist program, Jordan Sprueill, joined the staff July 2022, bringing a background in education.
“The first floor was always supposed to be a teaching institution,” Sprueill said. “So when we relaunched in 2016, the visiting artist program was focused on that educational aspect.”
Sprueill said the education department at the Gibbes in recent years has focused on bringing the museum’s contemporary initiatives, including the visiting artist program, to new and diverse audiences, looking to create many ways for locals to engage with art.
Part of that initiative is bringing programs (including visiting artists) out of the museum space and into the community, some of which happens through educational workshops for K-12 schools in the area.
“Not only do the artists come in here and spend six weeks here in their residency, but we’re also actively trying to get them to engage with the community — to bring people in and to send the artists out,” she said.
Sprueill, a Summerville high school graduate understands firsthand how creating diverse programs can attract museum newcomers. She had never visited the Gibbes until January 2022 when she attended “Improvised: A Hip Hop Experience,” a program in which local and emerging hip-hop artists responded to works in the Romare Bearden special exhibition. Once introduced to the museum, she wanted to get involved with creating exciting programs.
An important part of the equation is centering public programs specifically around each artist and what they can uniquely offer the community, she said. For example, an event last December with then-current resident artist Amiri Farris was held in Park Circle.
“We were trying to think of ways to engage with communities that don’t really know about the Gibbes,” Sprueill said. “We did it in North Charleston, where it’s maybe a far commute or maybe not the demographic that consistently comes in.
“We put canvases and easels in the middle of a park, had live music there. The people were actually able to grab materials that we brought in and create [art] based on the music. Amiri was live painting on a huge canvas, showing how to be inspired by the things that they hear.”
Open studios
The eight artists who are annually selected into the program will, for six weeks, work in a studio space on the museum’s admission-free first floor. Interested visitors can engage with artists during open studio hours. When the residency ends, artists show their completed body of work in the art sales gallery, also on the admission-free first floor.
Though it’s open to artists across the country, many of the individuals selected for the program deal with subject matter related to the South, Sprueill said. Current visiting artist Ransome, a painter who creates pictorial narratives, hails from New York, but his practice is informed by his grandparents’ origins as sharecroppers in North Carolina.
“The artwork that he created was from the perspective of somebody on the outside looking in, describing their perspective on the South,” Sprueill said. “That brings a unique point of view.”
Other criteria for selected artists are openness, willingness and ability to engage with the local community, she said.
When a showcase for historically Black colleges and universities took over the art sales gallery during this year’s Spoleto Festival USA, student artists were invited to the Gibbes for an artist talk and studio visit with Ransome — an invaluable experience for the group of young artists.
That moment serves as an example of the access to working creatives the visiting artist program aims to provide, she said, “allowing chances for our more established artists to pour into emerging artists helps their careers go to the next level.”
There are still opportunities to engage with the program for those not selected for the residency.
“Last year, we had 39 applications, and we could only choose eight,” Sprueill said. “But some of those people that we couldn’t fit into our year, we asked to do summer camps, different events, workshops. So we still engage with the people who aren’t selected.
The “visiting artist limited” residency is another option. Sometimes it may be a two-week residency, such as the coming limited residency with acclaimed performance artist Kate March. In her studio stay from July 30 through Aug. 19, Marsh will create six large-scale works as a part of Nether Space(s), a performance art piece channeling six women’s endometriosis pain experiences that she will debut in the Gibbes’ Rotunda gallery on Aug. 19.
“We wanted to do these pop-ups so that the space can be occupied at all times. We want to be a consistently looked-at museum,” Sprueill said. And the vision for the program continues to expand.
“Charleston is such a different place than it was 10 years ago. We don’t want to be known as just a history or art history museum, but an art museum that is based on contemporary art, that is constantly evolving, constantly changing and constantly being ahead of what’s happening in our city.”
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