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Photo by Kaylee Cook/Staff A piece by Mary Muszynski in the Imaginary Landscapes: Stories from the American South exhibit.
The Bascom Center for the Visual Arts will be holding a public exhibition reception on Thursday, June 16, from 5 - 6:30 p.m., to celebrate their current exhibits that will be on display, including three new summer exhibits that tie into the center’s current theme of place.
“We change out each exhibit multiple times a year, so every three or four months, we try to time it with the season,” exhibitions manager Zach Rogers said. “So, we’ll have our first round kind of early in the year, January through April, then we’ll do our turnovers in April generally. So, all these exhibits were put up in April or mid-May, and most of these will run all the way through the end of July into August.”
The new exhibits, which are titled Each Moment, Imaginary Landscapes: Stories from the American South and form•ative, all explore a wide array of different mediums including photography, metal, sculpture, canvas and much more. The Bascom exhibits work from local and regional artists, as well as national and international artists.
“A lot of the artists are relatively local or regional,” Rogers said. “The exhibitions are welcoming to anybody. We’ve had international artists; we’ve had nationally known artists. It just kind of depends on what the exhibit is and the guest curators that we bring in. We have all that museum standard for temperature or humidity controls, so we are able to borrow from different museums in the region. So, at the end of this year, for example, we’re borrowing Japanese woodblock prints from the Gibbes Museum in Charleston. So that’s coming at the end of the year. Those artists are obviously international from Japan. But we’re borrowing from a regional institution. So, the artwork at any given time could be from anywhere.”
Two of the newest summer exhibits were worked on by guest curators, such as Frankie Flood and Elizabeth Watson who worked on form•ative and Kate Anderson who helped curate Imaginary Landscapes: Stories of the American South. Both Anderson and Watson will be attending the reception as will many of the featured artists, including Bascom’s photography resident and sole artist for the Each Moment exhibit, Anna Norton.
“I think we are lucky that the community we have here in Highlands is able to support institutions like the Bascom,” Rogers said. “The Bascom is then able to provide to the community an experience that a lot of folks within Highlands, within Macon County and within the southeast don’t generally have. We put on exhibits that are on par with almost any cultural institution in the world.”
The Bascom boasts 14 exhibits in total and typically has around 10 new exhibits per year in its main galleries. With top grade temperature and humidity controls, the Bascom works to bring a top-notch museum experience to the people of Highlands.
“Not everybody can travel to the High Museum or even to New York City or Europe to go to the Louvre,” Rogers said. “So, we try to bring in a lot of those artists or similar quality pieces and have them here. It’s very important to be able to provide an opportunity for anybody in the community in the region to come in. We’re free admission, so there’s no gatekeeping. We want everybody to be able to experience the same thing.”
Admission to the Bascom is free for the general public, but donations can be made in person via donation boxes or online. Additional ways to support the center includes volunteering, which can also be done on the Bascom’s website.
For more information on the Bascom, donations, volunteering or upcoming events visit https://www.thebascom.org or call 526-4949. The Bascom is located at 323 Franklin Road in Highlands and is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m.
- By Kaylee Cook