Annual art exhibit will sell work from 60 Southeastern artists
The McKissick Museum will put on its annual Art Exhibition and Gala Sale tonight to benefit the museum’s original exhibitions as well as public programming and the artists represented.
With more than 100 pieces of art from more than 60 artists, the gala aims to celebrate the museum in addition to raising funds. This year’s “Gettin’ Fresh” event is the 18th of its kind.
“We really want to promote McKissick Museum over all,” said Ja-nae Epps, the museum’s operation manager. “We have something that’s different than the other museums around. Our collection is eclectic, and we share some things with the South Carolina State Museum, but they only focus on South Carolina when we focus on the Southeast.”
For the exhibit “A Sense of Place” — the pieces of which will be on sale at “Gettin’ Fresh” — the museum invited about 100 professional artists with connections to the Southeast, many of whom are from Columbia, to submit pieces to show. According to Epps, a museum show includes the draw of prestige that a gallery showing lacks.
Out of the 100 invited artists, only around 60 actually submitted pieces in a variety of media.
David Springer created two mixed media pieces, Moonlit Path and Providence and Fate, priced at $750 and $2,500, respectively. Moonlit Path, made of steel, copper and limestone, depicts small turtles making their way into steel waves. The three-dimensional piece even shows one of them turtles breaking through a wave.
Other artists, like Regina Moody, took to canvas with their oils. Moody’s “Through Their Enduring Toil” shows slave women wrapped up for the fall picking cotton and is priced at $250.
Though the pieces have been on exhibit since earlier this summer, one of the major points of the gala is to sell. Members of the museum paid only $50 for tickets while nonmembers paid $60, but Epps expects to sell the works as well.
Epps confessed that one piece of mixed ceramics and basketry created by Georgette Wright Sanders had buyer requests not long after it had been installed.
The decision to post the prices of the pieces for the entirety of the exhibit was only one in a slew of changes due to past experiences. When it began, the gala and exhibition were held in the spring.
A conflicting exhibit happened a few years back that forced the McKissick to reschedule the gala for the fall, putting them at the beginning of the exhibit season, kicking off the art season each year.
The gala is from 7:30 to 10 p.m. in the McKissick Museum on the Horseshoe. For more information of the art exhibition and gala, visit artsandsciences.sc.edu/mcks.