Culture and Community names 2025 artist in residence and community research partners
Culture and Community at the Penn Center National Historic Landmark District has named a new artist in residence and two new community research partners for 2025. Grammy-nominated tenor Victor Ryan Robertson, the incoming artist in residence, and Gullah farmers Ben C. Johnson and Charity Coleman, the community research partners, will engage with Sea Islands communities and visiting learners through new and existing programs supported by the Culture and Community partnership.
Robertson is an American musical artist who performs in genres including classical, contemporary, pop, and Broadway on both opera and theatrical stages. He recently sang the roles of Elijah and Street in X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X on the Grammy Award-nominated cast recording and at The Metropolitan Opera of New York, and appeared on the soundtrack for the 2023 Netflix movie Rustin.
In 2016, Robertson was given an out-of-print volume of sheet music for little-known 19th-century Gullah Geechee spirituals from the islands off the coast of his home state of South Carolina. The songs’ history, melodies and lyrics resonated with him deeply. In 2022, he invited his friend and colleague, the pianist, composer and Georgia native Adrianne Duncan, to set the a cappella melodies to music that reflected their backgrounds in opera, jazz and classical music. Robertson and Duncan gave a performance in which they shared and discussed a selection of their freshly conceived versions of these rediscovered hymns – many of which had gone largely unheard for as long as a century – as part of an April 2024 Penn Center Community Conversation before an audience that included more than 100 community members from St. Helena Island and nearby.
“It’s such an honor to be chosen artist in residence with the Penn Center,” Robertson said. “I’ve often said singing these reimagined Gullah hymns in front of the St. Helena community is like singing Puccini in front of the Florentines in Italy. Such rich history that still exists here and the support has been overwhelming.
“My goal was to see if we could apply my classical training to songs that are operatic in their own right. The deep soulfulness in the message of every song is what resonated most. I think we’ve found something spectacular in these rarely seen and heard works. It’s about the message in the music and that is what has informed our process. We are looking forward to giving back to the community all the inspiration these songs have given us the past two years.”
“Penn collaborating with UGA’s Willson Center, supported by funding from the Mellon Foundation, is a force multiplier,” said Dr. Robert Adams, executive director of the Penn Center. “Our dynamic partnership allows Penn to attract top creative talent like Victor Ryan Robertson. Penn is the proper venue to showcase these Gullah Geechee spirituals as Robertson explores how to put his unique operatic stamp on them.”
The Culture and Community partnership supports an artist residency each year for a project that engages or partners with Penn Center and surrounding Sea Islands communities in the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor. Robertson succeeds Amiri Farris, who served in the role from 2023-2024. Outcomes of each residency – readings, exhibitions, performances or installations – are shared with the public at Penn Center and in other appropriate community spaces in the region. In addition to this public presentation of the work of his residency, Robertson will engage with participants in the Culture & Community partnership’s upcoming Student Summer Research Residencies in May 2025.
The community research partners will also work directly with students in the research residencies in their roles of helping to anchor the partnership’s programs in local communities. Both Johnson and Cole farm in the St. Helena area, preserving traditional Gullah Geechee agricultural practices while responding to pressures from rising forces that include increasing development of coastal lands and a changing environment.
Johnson grew up on St. Helena and is an alumnus of the Penn School. After serving in the U.S. Army and receiving an education as a mechanic at Denmark Technical College, he worked as a welder in a New Jersey steel mill before returning to his family’s farm on St. Helena in 1973. He has worked that family land since then, teaching the methods he learned from his parents to his own children and grandchildren while integrating adaptive strategies to address modern conditions. Johnson was a longtime member of the Penn Center Board of Trustees.
Coleman is a native of Beaufort, SC who has been farming since high school. In 2022 she was named Hoop House Fellow at St. Helena’s Gullah Farmers Cooperative Association.
“My goal is to reconnect others with our agricultural roots by hosting seed-to-harvest workshops, providing an educational garden where people can see how Gullah cuisine staples are grown and tendered, and teaching about the importance of being able to identify native plants,” she said of her new role.
“It’s exciting to have Mr. Ben Johnson, who is a bedrock of Saint Helena farming, and Ms. Charity Coleman, who represents its future, as our 2025 community research partners,” Adams said. “They bring unique perspectives that will enrich the Culture and Community program and enhance the benefits that students will receive from its residencies.”
The 2025 Culture and Community Student Research Residencies are scheduled for May 14-19. The residencies provide undergraduate and graduate student place-based studies which are embedded in courses taught by faculty at participating institutions.