Historic Columbia will offer two virtual round table programs in August about the monuments and grounds of the South Carolina State House. These programs are led by Dr. Lydia Mattice Brandt, an architectural historian and an associate professor at the University of South Carolina, whose research informed Historic Columbia’s online tour of the State House Monuments. SC Humanities supported the tour of the State House Monuments with a Major Grant.
Tuesday, August 4, 2020 | 12:00 – 1:00 p.m.
History of Confederate Monuments on the SC State House Grounds – Virtual Program
The Civil War is the most-remembered historic event among the monuments on the state house grounds. But the eight Confederate monuments also commemorated the end of Reconstruction and its empowerment of Black citizens. This presentation will go beyond the Lost Cause to investigate the many motivations for both past and present for these monuments and more.
Tickets: Free for Historic Columbia Members
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Tuesday, August 18, 2020 | 12:00 – 1:00 p.m.
The Last Fifty Years: A Modern State House Grounds
The nineteenth-century state house grounds has seen tremendous change since 1970: it has doubled in size, gained new buildings and monuments, and its paths and statues have been rearranged. This presentation will give an overview of the massive shifts in the ways in which South Carolina’s government remembered its history and accommodated its increasingly bureaucratic government.
Tickets: Free for Historic Columbia Members
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Lydia Mattice Brandt, PhD is an architectural historian and an associate professor at the University of South Carolina. She is the author of numerous books and articles on the role of history in popular visual culture and architecture. Her forthcoming guidebook to the SC state house grounds (published by University of South Carolina Press, spring 2021) is the only comprehensive history of the remarkable state capitol building and landscape.
Historic Columbia supports and protects the historical and cultural heritage of Columbia and Richland County through advocacy, education and preservation.
The mission of SC Humanities is to enrich the cultural and intellectual lives of all South Carolinians. Established in 1973, this 501(c) 3 organization is governed by a volunteer 20-member Board of Directors comprised of community leaders from throughout the state. It presents and/or supports literary initiatives, lectures, exhibits, festivals, publications, oral history projects, videos and other humanities-based experiences that directly or indirectly reach more than 250,000 citizens annually.
