One of the criticisms of the movie 12 Years a Slave was that every time director/artist Steve McQueen wanted to make a transition, he would cut to yet another shot of swathes of Spanish moss, the soft grey plant which seems to hang from almost every old oak in the American south. Visiting Savannah, Georgia, for the first time last month, I could absolutely understand why McQueen couldn’t resist doing this. The soft, drifting veils are so distinctive, and add a haunted, Gothic touch to the landscape.
I was in Savannah at the invitation of the Savannah College of Art and Design to discuss an exhibition at the SCAD Art Museum next year, and I stayed in the historic SCAD guest house, Magnolia Hall, which comes complete with a southern porch and rocking chairs.
Curator Simon Njami was in Savannah at the same time – his exhibition ‘The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Hell, Purgatory revisited by Contemporary African Artists’, currently at the MMK in Frankfurt, will move to the Art Museum later this year. In this pic, SCAD curator Aaron Garvey is on Simon’s left, and we are lunching at a funky retro restaurant called Back in the Day.
The ruins of a 19th century freight warehouse stand on the grounds of the stunning new museum, seen here in the background, with its iconic glass tower rising above the architectural award winning museum galleries.
White armchairs light up at night, and the space inside the ruins is used for performances.
Inside the museum, one of the current exhibitions is Johannesburg artist Sam Nhlengethwa’s impressive and lively ‘Life, Jazz and Lots of Other Things’, up until June 22.
The exhibition draws on the influence of Romare Bearden’s collage style on the work of the artist, a style which Nhlengethwa took as a starting point for his own free experimentation. This detail of a work so heavy it took six men to carry it into the gallery translates the freedom of collage into an image rendered entirely in tiles.
SCAD owns 72 buildings throughout Savannah, all converted to different uses for the college while retaining their own identity. Here, I am sitting in the foyer of an old cinema used for screenings and film events.
Laurie Ann Farrell is the executive director of exhibitions, overseeing not only the gallery programmess in Savannah, but also on the other SCAD campuses in Atlanta, Paris and Hong Kong.
