Now reopening after months-long construction, Greenville County Museum of Art makes a poignant return with Soul Deep: African-American Masterworks, featuring 38 evocative works by 20 artists.
The exhibit spans 180 years of American history, from a rare 1840 poem jar by enslaved potter David Drake to a 2020 abstract painting by Frank Wimberley. One highlight of the show is a recently discovered landscape by Henry Ossawa Tanner, the first African-American painter to receive international acclaim. The depiction of Whitewater Falls near Cashiers is one of only four paintings that have been discovered from the artist’s sojourn to North Carolina in the late 1880s.
Post–World War II work includes non-objective painting, color field paintings, and realist work by practitioners including Thomas Sills, whose experimental abstracts are featured in their own concurrent GCMA exhibit, Thomas Sills: Man of Color. Paula Angermeier, head of communications at GCMA, says additional galleries will open as construction permits, and if all goes according to schedule, six will be open by spring. She adds that the construction efforts, including renovating, replacing, and updating critical infrastructure, will ensure the protection of the community’s valuable art collection.
