Beauty out of the Ashes

Aaron Douglas. Cover Illustration for Fire!!  Devoted to Younger Negro Artists, ed. Wallace Thurman. New York, 1926..

March 1, 2023.

Professors Ronald D. Patkus, Eve Dunbar, and Caroline Culp discuss their current exhibition in the Thompson Memorial Library, Beauty out of the Ashes: Printed Works of the Harlem Renaissance, 1923-1936, on view through June 15, 2023.

A key focus of the exhibition is the literary production of the Harlem Renaissance. Works of thirteen different authors are presented. Together they provide a window into some of the key aspects of authorship during the Harlem Renaissance. At the same time, it’s also important to note that the exhibition considers not only texts, but also art, since the first editions of these works often included artwork on the dust jackets or within the book itself. By studying not just texts but also physical books, we gain a sense of the visual nature of published works, and thus a wider understanding for how works of the Harlem Renaissance were presented to their reading audience.

 

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Anne Gaud Tinker

Alice Ravenel Huger Smith. Landscape, c. 1928. 10-3/8 x 13-3/4". The Johnson Collection, Spartenburg, S.C.

December 14, 2022. 

Anne Gaud Tinker (VC '67) discusses the book she co-authored with Dwight McInvaill and Caroline Palmer, Alice: Alice Ravenel Huger Smith, Charleston Renaissance Artist, published in 2021 in Charleston by the Middleton Place Foundation and Evening Post Books.

A lifelong Charleston resident with limited professional training, Alice Smith forged her style from a wide range of sources—her French teacher at the local Carolina Art Association, mentors who introduced her to Tonalism and Japanese woodblock prints, and extensive fieldwork. In a career of sixty years, she defied gender expectations and gained national acclaim.

Descended from prominent rice planters, Alice’s work reflects a reverence for nature and nostalgia for an idealized past. She helped spark Charleston’s historic preservation movement, depicted the waning days of rice planting, and captured the mystical spirit of the Lowcountry’s coast, marshes, and woodlands in luminous watercolors.

Alice was one of the principal guiding lights of an invigorating cultural change that flourished between the twentieth century’s two world wars called the Charleston Renaissance. In recent years, this artistic and cultural movement has been reexamined for its elitist perspective and romanticized view of Charleston and the city’s fraught history. Alice’s story raises important questions about historical memory and the forces that shaped Charleston into the city it is today.

Middleton Place Museum Shop Books

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Bryan W. Van Norden

 

Kano Toshun Yoshinobo (1747-1797). The Three Laughers of Tiger Ravine, 1886 (Fenollosa-Weld Collection).

September 23, 2020.

Bryan W. Van Norden, Professor of Philosophy on the James Monroe Taylor Chair at Vassar, talks about his recent monograph, Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto (Columbia UP, 2017).

Are American colleges and universities failing their students by refusing to teach the philosophical traditions of China, India, Africa, and other non-Western cultures? This biting and provocative critique of American higher education says yes. Even though we live in an increasingly multicultural world, most philosophy departments stubbornly insist that only Western philosophy is real philosophy and denigrate everything outside the European canon. In Taking Back Philosophy, Bryan W. Van Norden lambastes academic philosophy for its Eurocentrism, insularity, and complicity with nationalism and issues a ringing call to make our educational institutions live up to their cosmopolitan ideals.

 

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