Virtual Literary Gibbes

Join us for a book-club style discussion in collaboration with Charleston County Public Library inspired by Building a Legacy: The Vibrant Vision Collection of Jonathan Green and Richard Weedman. Over the past forty years, acclaimed artist Jonathan Green and his partner and studio director, Richard Weedman, have amassed an astonishing collection of nearly 1,300 paintings, sculpture, and works on paper. In this exhibition, forty-nine works of art from this significant private collection offer a rare glimpse at the couple’s aesthetic interests and the artistic inspiration behind Green’s own artwork. Building a Legacy explores the themes of work, love, belonging, and spirituality. Works in the exhibition portray tender moments between a parent and child, struggles for racial equality, pride in ancestral heritage, and strength derived through personal faith. The collection also expands the traditional notion of American art and identity, embracing a Pan American approach that goes beyond the United States to include art and artists of African, Caribbean, and Latin American descent. This approach provides a broader look at our nation’s history and a better understanding of what it means to be American today. 

On Beauty, a comedy of manners by Zadie Smith, is the story of an interracial family living in the university town of Wellington, Massachusetts, whose misadventures in the culture wars—on both sides of the Atlantic—serve to skewer everything from family life to political correctness to the combustive collision between the personal and the political. An infidelity, a death, and a legacy set in motion a chain of events that sees all parties forced to examine the unarticulated assumptions which underpin their lives. How do you choose the work on which to spend your life? Why do you love the people you love? Do you really believe what you claim to? And what is the beautiful thing, and how far will you go to get it? (From the publisher) 

The discussion will focus on the book and works in the exhibition and will take place on Zoom. Please read the book so you can participate in the discussion. Participation is free, but please register online in advance at http://www.gibbesmuseum.org/programs-events/literary-gibbes-a-virtual-book-club-discussion/357. For more information, contact Becca Hiester at 834-722-2706 ext. 237 or [email protected].