A traveling exhibit of work by Florence’s own and one of America’s most powerful African-American painters William H. Johnson will visit the county for three months beginning in September, according to the Smithsonian Institution.
“William H. Johnson: An American Modern” is a traveling exhibit that features 20 pieces from the James E. Lewis Museum at Morgan State University. The work exhibits aspects of his career from post-impressionism and expressionism of the 1920s to his refined aesthetic in the 1940s through expressionist and vernacular landscapes, still life paintings and portraits that feature Johnson’s primitivism aesthetic within the context of modernism.
The work will be on display at the newly renovated Jones-Carter Gallery in Lake City from Sept. 21 to Dec. 29. Executive director of the Museum Society of Lake City Ray McBride, who oversees the gallery, said the exhibit was months in the making, but was confirmed last week per the facility being brought up to Smithsonian standards later this month by adding a fire suppression system and backup generator.
"It had been tentative that we could (get the exhibit) once we met requirements for the building,” McBride said. “We’ve reported hourly humidity for the past three months and progressed, bringing the building up to code with a timeline showing that we can meet the requirements.”
The $20,000 participation fee was covered by the museum. The Lake City Partnership Council will reportedly, through a grant, cover the gallery’s upfitting costs and for a conservator to unpack the exhibit, costs that McBride said will be worth it.
“This will possibly rival the numbers from ArtFields throughout the event,” McBride said. “It’s all about economic development and drawing people to Lake City.”
And with the largest exhibit of Johnson’s work on display in the state, interest is already mounting.
Born in Florence in 1901, Johnson moved to Harlem when he was 17, working odd jobs to save money to attend the National Academy of Design. Upon completion of school, Johnson’s teacher and mentor Charles Hawthorne helped Johnson study in France for three years; a transformational time for the young artist when he enhanced his painting style while studying European artists.
He returned to New York in 1929 and traveled to Denmark a year later where he married Danish artist Holcha Krake. He remained there, later moving to Norway, until returning to New York in 1938.
Johnson’s return marked a transition in his art, a transition where he began exploring the black experience, reminiscing of life in the rural south earlier in the century paired with upbeat ambiance of Harlem, according to Smithsonian American Art Museum chief curator Virginia Mecklenburg.
In 1941 Johnson had a solo exhibition, but a series of events over the next few years caused his decline including a studio fire and the death of his wife, pushing him back to South Carolina for support and then to Denmark where he was diagnosed with advanced syphilis. He returned to New York in 1947 where he remained in a hospital for 23 years until his death in 1970. He ceased painting in 1956.
More than 1,000 of Johnson’s artworks were saved from destruction by the Harmon Foundation and donated to what is now the Smithsonian American Art Museum under the terms that the Smithsonian donates artworks to several black colleges and universities.
The exhibit will open to the public on Sept. 21 during the South Carolina Tobacco Festival.
Article by Gavin Jackson; reposted from scnow.com.
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