Panel to discuss exhibit's plantation imagery

The great American novelist Ralph Ellison would have loved this exhibit. "Landscape of Slavery: The Plantation in American Art" is a traveling exhibition curated by the Gibbes Museum of Art that's designed to shed light on slavery and race relations in the 19th and 20th centuries.

In 1953, Ellison wrote "Invisible Man," a National Book Award winner that many consider one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. In it, he explores through his characters the invisibility of African-Americans before and during his time.

He believed that their humanity and their contributions to American society were hidden in plain sight, hence never acknowledged.

"Landscape" is visibility and acknowledgment, big time.

Contributors to a companion book and to the exhibition will gather Friday at the museum to discuss the book and exhibition, an examination of plantation imagery. It's titled "A Critical Conversation." A book signing will be held afterward.

Angela Mack, newly installed Gibbes executive director, will moderate the panel discussion. Mack curated "Landscape" when she worked as the museum's chief curator. According to her colleagues, she's been the bass line to the melody of their work.

"She was our Harriet Tubman," said Leslie King-Hammond, one of the books' contributors. "She led us to the North." King-Hammond, dean of Graduate Studies at the Maryland Institute College of Art, was speaking metaphorically of Mack's guidance during the project.

Others on the star-studded panel include:

--Dr. Alexis L. Boylan, assistant professor at the University of Tennessee, where she teaches 19th- and 20th-century American art. Boylan is particularly interested in the presentation and performance of masculinity in turn-of-the-century American paintings and sculpture.

--Dr. Michael D. Harris, associate professor of art history in the Department of African-American Studies at Emory University. Harris has earned numerous graduate degrees, including a Ph.D. in art history from Yale University. His areas of specialty are African-American art, Yoruba art and contemporary African art and he's consulting curator of African-American Art at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.

--Stephen G. Hoffius is a freelance writer and editor who lives in Charleston. For 12 years he was the director of publications for the South Carolina Historical Society. He has worked with the Gibbes Museum of Art on two previous publications, "In Pursuit of Refinement: Charlestonians Abroad, 1740-1860" and "Henry Benbridge (1743-1812): Charleston Painter."

--Dr. Maurie D. McInnis, associate professor and director of the American Studies program at the University of Virginia. Her main research interest is in the cultural history of American Art in the Colonial and antebellum South. Much of her work has been focused on the material culture of Charleston, including the exhibition catalog "In Pursuit of Refinement: Charlestonians Abroad, 1740-1860" and the book, "The Politics of Taste in Antebellum Charleston."

--Roberta Sokolitz, an independent curator and writer with 30 years of experience as an arts professional, including tenures at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and the Gibbes Museum of Art. Her curatorial projects with the Gibbes include "Rhythms of Life: The Art of Jonathan Green" and "The Poetry of Place: Landscapes of Thomas Coram and Charles Fraser."

--Dr. John Michael Vlach, professor of American Studies and Anthropology at George Washington University and director of the university's Folklife Program. For more than 30 years, he has concentrated his scholarship on aspects of the African diaspora by conducting field research in Africa, the Caribbean and across the southern regions of the United States.

Mack said one of Vlach's books, "The Planter's Prospect: Privilege and Slavery in Plantation Paintings" (2001) was the inspiration for "Landscape."

"He sent me the manuscript for his book, 'Planter's Prospect' to read because he needed to get all of his illustrations together for the publisher," Mack said. "I realized then and there the potential for an exhibition on plantation imagery because Charleston is at the epicenter."

Sokolitz has her arms around "Landscape." She said, "This exhibition will become part of the significant, critical dialogue about race and history in this country right now. The works of art and artists can have an impact and a depth of expression that goes beyond language."

When asked what people can take away from viewing "Landscape" and hearing the panel discussion, she said, "There is an important contribution to an ongoing revision of slavery and the plantation past. This is a vast, difficult subject."

Reach Jack McCray at 937-5519 or jmccray@postandcourier.com.