What Is a Poet Laureate and What Do They Do?

For this presentation, Madden draws on his eight years of service as the first city poet laureate in South Carolina, his understanding of process and functions, and his interactions with other laureates across the nation in the Academy of American Poets program, as well as his research on the surge of poet laureate appointments across … Read more

Art and the American Revolution

How did artists depict the American Revolution while it was happening and shortly after independence was won? What visual knowledge was available to newly minted Americans about the war and its heroes? How was the war remembered fifty and seventy-five years later, as the nation headed towards Civil War?

Da Wada Brought Us & Kept Us: Gullah Geechee Art Collection of Victoria A. Smalls

Explore the Gullah Geechee people’s deep connection to water through the evocative art collection of Victoria A. Smalls. Learn how the waterways that once carried their ancestors into bondage now serve as symbols of resilience, heritage, and cultural continuity. This presentation speaks to the history, art and culture of the Gullah Geechee people. Each piece … Read more

Every Picture Tells a Story

In this presentation, Robert Clark discusses the stories behind his most popular photos taken during a 42 year photographic career in South Carolina. He discusses the unique logistics and circumstances that occurred during each picture, using each experience to educate the audience and help them become better photographers.

The Rise of 21st Century Afrofuturism in Literature, Music, and Film

After the first wave in the 1970’s which coincided with the Black Power and Black Arts Movements, Afrofuturism has experienced a second wave in the 21st century with the advent of new literature, hip hop music, television, comics, and film. The pinnacle of this second wave of Afrofuturism has been the meteoric rise of the 2018 … Read more

Gender in 21st Century Shakespeare

Can Othello be a woman? Can Ophelia be a man? Why not? Deep shifts in thinking about sex, gender identity and expression, and sexuality have occurred since the turn of the millennium, and correspondingly in casting, directing, and acting decisions in Shakespearean performance. Both major and regional productions reflect shifts in how gender changes are … Read more

Poland & Clark—The 50-50 Expeditions

50 Years of South Carolina in Images & Stories Robert Clark launched his photography career in 1974. Tom Poland moved to South Carolina in 1974 to write and teach. Poland and Clark met at South Carolina Wildlife magazine and their journey in words and images began. Their seminal feature, “Tenant Homes—Testament To Hard Times,” charted … Read more

Contemporary Art Quilting

This is a lecture that addresses the history of art quilts with images and explanations that take quilts off beds and onto walls and as sculptural artworks.

Fashionable Beauty in Botticelli’s Paintings

This session provides a close look at Sandro Botticelli’s techniques for rendering enchanting fashions in his paintings and drawings. By folding and pleating fabric with light and shadow, simulating colorful dyes with rich pigments, and weaving complicated patterns into his garments, Botticelli captured the alluring beauty of the textile industry in fifteenth-century Florence. This talk examines examples of garments … Read more

Illuminated Manuscripts

This talk examines the construction, writing, and illustration of illuminated manuscripts, particularly choral books, from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It provides examples for understanding page design and technical expertise. It also looks at the chronological development of illustration during this period.

Raphael’s Madonnas

Throughout his career, Raphael Sanzio created numerous sweet and beautiful Madonna and Child devotional paintings. This talk examines the development of devotional paintings in the Renaissance and their location within the domestic interior. It examines Raphael’s Madonna paintings in relation to devotional and artistic practices in Florence and Rome in the early sixteenth century.

Venus’s Verdant Virtues

Venus is a goddess of nature, who thrives in verdant places. Artists commissioned to illustrate her landscapes were challenged, not only in rendering specific atmospheric qualities but also in portraying a green geography that would remain evergreen. Green pigments, in fact, posed many challenges to fifteenth-century Florentine artists. If not bound properly or if exposed … Read more

Painting Skin: Complexions, Cosmetics, and Reproduction in Renaissance Florence

This talk explores Florentine portrayals of the female nude, including Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, in relation to fourteenth- and fifteenth-century discourses concerned with skin, fertility, and the feminine toilette. It argues that these paintings 1) offered instruction to women in the arts of beauty and 2) provided a physical image that could aid in the … Read more

Michelangelo and his Marbles

This talk explores Michelangelo’s use of marble throughout his career. It looks at obtaining marble from the mines in Carrara and the marble itself as an artistic material. The talk provides an overview of how Michelangelo sculpted bodies in marble, drawing attention to his manipulation of anatomical form in sculptures, such as the Bacchus, Pietà, … Read more

Colors in Renaissance Florence

This talk examines the colors of Renaissance paintings, diving deeply into the natural origins of pigments. These colored substances, which could derive from minerals, semi-precious gemstones, plants, and insects, were bound with egg yolk, gum resin, oil, and lime water to create paint mediums for different surfaces in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This talk … Read more

From Gone with the Wind to Steel Magnolias: In Search of the Real Southern Woman

This entertaining presentation, based on the presenter’s research on Southern women, explores the 19th-century myth of “the Southern lady” and its predominance in popular culture then and now in contrast to the realistic qualities of diverse women of the South from the past into the present.  Audience participation is encouraged.

Scrooge, “According to Gullah”

This is a Christmas season comedy based on Ebenezer Scrooge from the Charles Dickens’ classic A Christmas Carol.  The stage performance features Donald Sweeper acting the part of Scrooge as if he is speaking in the Gullah Language.

How Shirley Temple Saved America

The little actress was the nation’s top box office draw during the worst years of the Great Depression and helped Americans forget their troubles as she sang and danced away the troubles of the characters she played. She worked through her childhood, while her parents spent her money, but went on to successful later careers … Read more

Poetry Slam: Putting performance into contemporary poetry

(Grades 4-12 OR Adults) In this hands-on workshop, poet and educator Kimberly Simms will lead attendees in performing well-known contemporary poems or pre-written original poems. The workshop will feature a short craft lesson on voice and blocking. The workshop will also include a discussion on the history and current state of poetry slams. The session will … Read more

Poetic Perspectives: Exploring the humanities through poetry

(K-12 OR Adults)In this workshop, poet and educator Kimberly Simms will lead attendees in writing monologue style poems in the voice of a favorite literary character or historical figure. This workshop works particularly well when exploring a pre-chosen work of fiction or historical figure as part of a larger celebration, conference, or unit. The workshop … Read more

Shoah: The Art of the Holocaust

One of the most compelling testimonies to the horrors of the holocaust are the more than 30,000 surviving works created by artists while imprisoned in ghettos and concentration camps during the years of the Nazi Third Reich.  Many of these artists perished, others survived.  The body of work they created is extraordinary in its quality … Read more

All Things Southern: The Charleston Renaissance and the Revival of Southern Art

Once celebrated as “the Queen of the South,” Charleston, South Carolina, was left devastated by the Civil War–a faded reflection of its antebellum glory.  For 50 years following the war, the city struggled to overcome economic and cultural stagnation. Then in 1915, a group of artists and writers rediscovered the City’s innate beauty and artistic … Read more

Trusting the Light: America’s Master Impressionists

One can hardly think of a more revolutionary and significant art movement than that of 19th century Impressionism, a style so influential and popular it continues to flourish today. This presentation examines the American Impressionist movement, its leading artists, and their transformation of the American art scene.

The Art of Norman Rockwell

As the premiere illustrator for the Saturday Evening Post for nearly half a century, no other American artist was more popular with the public than Norman Rockwell. Americans saw in Rockwell’s art a reflection of their values, their strengths and their foibles. Despite his easy-going, pipe-smoking facade, he was a lonely man who suffered from … Read more

A Landscape Aflame: The Art Of The American Civil War

The art of leading American artists and photographers of the American Civil War era provides unique and compelling images of the experiences of soldiers, civilians and slaves. From the battlefield to the home front, this art includes insights into the viewpoints that motivated both sides of the conflict and eloquent depictions of the human face … Read more

The Hudson River School Artists

The Hudson River School artists were a group of 19th Century American Artists who painted primarily in the Hudson River Valley of New York in the Catskills and Adirondack mountains.  Their work transformed American landscape art by depicting nature realistically, while endowing it with spiritual meaning.  This introduction to the Hudson River School artists includes … Read more