This is an article forwarded from a magazine with the strange name Garden and Gun! Savannah is a wonderful historic port city on the Atlantic Coast. It was a city where thousands of ships came in and out taking out bales of cotton and bringing in slaves from Africa. The film tracing African American's journey to the United States through slave trade was filmed here. Roots showed the horrors these families and individuals endured. Savannah has lovely old ante-bellum homes and old brick buildings that are now cafe's and shops. It has had its good times and bad, but more recently the arts have turned around a fading Southern beauty. The Savannah School of Art and Design started as a modest art schools that has now taken over more and more of the city. One can see art students with sketch pad in hand bustling through the city streets from one class to another.
From left: The museum's facade incorporates reclaimed brick from the site's antebellum railroad sheds; Kendall Buster's sculptural installation (Photos courtesy of SCAD) |
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| GO SOUTH | Savannah's New Art Hub
When the Savannah College of Art and Design restored a faded 1890s Volunteer Guard Armory to house its first class of students in 1979, it ushered in an era of revitalization in the city that has helped transform what was already a little Southern gem into one of the country’s hippest hot spots. Some three decades and 60-odd buildings later, SCAD is changing the face of downtown Savannah once again with a new contemporary art and design museum.
Opening this Saturday, the SCAD Museum of Art unites the remnants of an antebellum railroad depot, the only one of its kind still in existence, with 65,000 square feet of new education and exhibition space, including a 250-seat theater, multiple galleries, a terrace and outdoor projection screen, a café, and an event atrium. In addition, the museum will house the André Leon Talley Gallery, featuring works by Manolo Blahnik, Tom Ford, and Vera Wang, among others, as well as the Walter O. Evans Center for African American Studies. An 86-foot-tall steel-and-glass lantern stands as the architectural punctuation mark to the school’s—and the city’s—enduring cultural legacy.
Inaugural exhibits from video artist Bill Viola and sculptors Liza Lou and Kendall Buster kick off a year-round program of shows, installations, performances, and events. And navigating the museum’s sizeable offerings is a breeze thanks to a giant interactive touch pad in the entry hall (think an informational kiosk for the iPad age). Further proof that at SCAD, form and function go hand in hand.
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