From staff reports
The Penn Center National Historic Landmark District is presenting A World Within Worlds: The Visionary Art of Sam Doyle, an exhibition featuring the artistic works of Sam Doyle (1906-1985).
The exhibition launches at 6 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 23 with a panel discussion at Penn Center’s Frisell House. From 7 to 8 p.m., there will be a reception and viewing at the York W. Bailey Museum. Penn Center is located at 16 Penn Center Circle-West on St. Helena Island.
The exhibition will remain on display from Saturday, Sept. 23 through December 22. The exhibition is free and open to the public.
Doyle, a former St. Helena resident and student at Penn School, is a world-renowned folk artist whose work has appeared at such esteemed museums as the Smithsonian Art Museum, the High Museum of Art, and the Gibbes Museum.
The apparent simplicity of Doyle’s compositions belies the intricacy of their conception. His pointed allusions, swirled planes of color, and hand-painted phrases create surfaces dense with meaning.
The exhibit will be curated by Shawnya Harris, the Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Curator of African American and African Diasporic Art at the Georgia Museum of Art. She has curated exhibitions of the works of Chicago-based sculptor Richard Hunt (b. 1935) and Gee’s Bend, Alabama quilter Mary Lee Bendolph (b. 1935), and a traveling exhibition of the works of painter and printmaker Emma Amos (1937-2020).
Her many awards include selection as the 2022 Georgia Museum Professional of the Year, and as a 2021 Fellow of the Center for Curatorial Leadership. She is the recipient of the 2018 James A. Porter and David C. Driskell Book Award in African American Art History for her publication Expanding Tradition: Selections from the Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Collection.
A graduate of Yale University, she earned a Ph.D. in Art History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Panelists are Emory Campbell, Deacon Peter Smalls, Mary Mack, Louanne LaRoche and Saundra “Renee” Smith.
This project was supported by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation. This project is also supported by Penn Center, Inc.
