News and Media

Published: Mar 1, 2010

SAVANNAH, Ga.—The SCAD Museum of Art announces that it is the recipient of two major gifts that will enhance the museum’s costume collection and endow new programming for the Walter O. Evans Center for African American Studies.

The Jacob and Gwen Knight Lawrence Foundation has awarded the SCAD Museum of Art a $50,000 endowment grant to help establish a biennial scholarly symposium about African-American art. The first symposium will take place in the future Walter O. Evans Center for African American Studies and will honor the memory of Jacob Lawrence, one of the country’s greatest African-American artists. SCAD first hosted an exhibition of Lawrence’s work in 1998 at its Pinnacle Gallery as part of its “Icons of the Century” exhibition series, which featured the work of seminal 20th-century artists. The SCAD Museum of Art also owns a number of major Jacob Lawrence paintings, including the original gouache paintings for his Genesis Creation Sermon series (1989), which were later produced as prints, as well as his Card Game (1953). These works are part of the museum’s Walter O. Evans Collection, donated to the university in 2005, and will be displayed in the center upon its opening.

The biennial symposium will serve as an important programming enrichment for SCAD’s Center for African American Studies and the SCAD Museum of Art. The interdisciplinary center is currently under construction as part of the expansion of the museum. The museum complex is located in a National Historic Landmark, the former 1853 freight depot of the Central of Georgia Railroad, the only remaining antebellum railroad complex in the country. The mission of the Walter O. Evans Center for African American Studies is to promote the wide public knowledge, understanding and appreciation of African-American culture, art and literature. The generosity of the Jacob and Gwen Knight Lawrence Foundation will allow the center to establish legacy programming that will have both national and international significance.

In addition to the Lawrence Foundation endowment grant, the SCAD Museum of Art has been awarded a $6,000 Preservation Assistance grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities to acquire storage equipment and related preservation materials to partially house core pieces of the museum’s costume collection. The collection of approximately 550 objects, which includes the C.Z. Guest Collection and other gifts, consists of haute couture and other significant fashion examples from the 1920s to 2008. Designers represented in the collection include Fortuny, Chanel, Oscar de la Renta, Lagerfeld, Bill Blass and Givenchy, among other major figures. In addition to public programs and exhibitions, the museum’s costume and textile collections support the university’s degree programs such as fibers, fashion, film and art history.

As a teaching museum, the SCAD Museum of Art supports the academic and creative programs at SCAD by providing students with direct encounters with works by major artists while enriching the artistic, educational and cultural offerings available to the university and wider communities. The museum is a cultural gem that adds to Savannah’s reputation as an ideal location for visitors and those interested in the arts and architecture.

The SCAD Museum of Art is located at 227 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. in Savannah. For more information about the museum and to arrange group tours, call 912.525.7191. Museum hours are Monday-Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. and Sunday, 1-5 p.m. Media may call 912.525.5210 for interview and image requests.