SC State visiting professor to curate exhibition of works by renowned artist Leo Twiggs
The exhibition can be viewed beginning Thursday, Jan. 29, through Sunday, May 3, at the Gibbes Museum of Art located at 135 Meeting St. in Charleston.
Twiggs, a retired art professor and founding director of the I.P. Stanback Museum and Planetarium at SC State, is the recipient of several awards, including the Order of the Palmetto, South Carolina’s highest civilian honor, and the Elizabeth O’Neal Verner Governor’s Award in the Arts of which he is a two-time recipient.
Martin, visiting professor in the history and theory of art in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at SC State, will serve as guest curator of REVELATIONS, a retrospective exhibition of more than 40 of Twiggs’ works.
The exhibition will showcase more than 60 years of works created over Twigg’s exceptional career and is the first retrospective exhibition held for the award-winning Twiggs in the state of South Carolina.
It will also serve as a commemoration of both the 50th anniversary of Twiggs’ first exhibition at the Gibbes Museum of Art in 1976 and as a major component of the museum’s celebration of the 250th anniversary of the United States.
The REVELATIONS exhibition is accompanied by a complete full-color catalogue, with essays by Martin; Dr. Walter Edgar, South Carolina’s premier historian; Dr. Connie Choi, curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and Dr. William Eiland, director emeritus of the Georgia Museum of Art.
The exhibition will also include a special poetic tribute to Twiggs by poet Nickey Finney, a National Book Award winner and University of South Carolina professor.
Twiggs, a graduate of then Claflin College and New York University, is the first African American to have graduated with the terminal degree in art education from the University of Georgia.
Martin, who has written extensively about Twiggs’ artwork, served as a consultative scholar for the 2024 South Carolina Educational Television documentary on Twiggs entitled Arriving: Leo Twiggs and His Art. The documentary was first broadcast in June of 2024.
Martin is a graduate of Yale University and Hunter College, a public university within the City University of New York. He has completed additional study in contemporary art and art theory at New York University and holds a Ph.D. in philosophy with a concentration in the history of aesthetics from the University of South Carolina.
For more information about the exhibition, contact the Gibbes Museum of Art at 843-722-2706, ext. 241, or visit their website at https://www.gibbesmuseum.org.