Category: News

A new $1 million grant from the Mellon Foundation will continue its support of the Culture and Community project

Culture and Community will co-sponsor a symposium on Gullah/Geechee lineage and legacy, as well as coordinate and support a delegation of students attending the festival from Claflin University, College of Charleston, and Georgia Tech.

The Grammy-nominated tenor will also engage in a public conversation as part of the University of Georgia’s 2025 Spotlight on the Arts festival. The November 12 event is free and open to all.

The Culture and Community partnership invites submissions for an artist residency program to take place during 2026 on the theme of Commemoration. Proposals must be in media that relates to, and be in conversation with, the artistic, cultural, and historic legacies of Penn Center and the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor more broadly.

Grammy-nominated tenor Victor Ryan Robertson (pictured), 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.

Culture and Community at the Penn Center National Historic Landmark District hosted its first student research residencies in June 2022. This story in @UGAResearch considered what the experience meant to members of the initial cohort of students and faculty.

In this April 2024 Penn Center Community Conversation, tenor Victor Ryan Robertson and composer and pianist Adrianne Duncan performed their collaborative work, “Gullah Meditations,” followed by an audience conversation moderated by Dr. Robert Adams, Penn Center executive director.

Culture and Community at the Penn Center National Historic Landmark District has named its 2024 community research partners: Mr. Ed Atkins and Ms. Earnestine Atkins of St. Helena Island.

Farris’s exhibition, The Land in Us, is on display January 6 to April 6 in the York W. Bailey Museum. A public reception will be held at the Museum at 6 pm Saturday, February 24.

Farris’s work will be on display at the Lyndon House Arts Center through Oct. 5, 2024.