The Morris Museum of Art Shows the Art of Edward Rice

Written by Beverley Leitner Thursday, 13 October 2011 22:20

Augusta, GA.- The Morris Museum of Art is proud to present "Preservation of Place: The Art of Edward Rice", on display through November 20th. This exhibition, one of the most inclusive overviews of Rice's career to-date, features thirty paintings produced since 1982 by the noted realist, drawn from private and public collections from across the south. “His painterly skills, combined with the instincts of a serious architectural historian, have combined to create a body of work that is noteworthy for its elegance, precision, and devotion to the telling detail. His depiction of the obvious and the forgotten, the historic and generic—the often overlooked—is more than a simple architectural record” said Kevin Grogan, director of the Morris Museum of Art. “These images haunt the imagination and mirror the lost architecture of the Old South. They preserve a sense of self as much as they do a sense of Southern history.“

Born and raised in North Augusta, South Carolina, Edward Rice began to study art at an early age in North Augusta. He crossed the Savannah River to continue his studies in Augusta, Georgia, at the Gertrude Herbert Institute of Art and at Augusta College with painters Eugenia Comer, David Jones, and Freeman Schoolcraft, who became his particular friend and mentor. After studying with Schoolcraft, Rice commenced his own teaching career and became director and artist-in-residence at the Gertrude Herbert Institute of Art. Then, in 1982, he left that position to focus exclusively on his own art. He established a studio in a building near the Savannah River and, for the first time, began painting architectural subjects exclusively—depicting the historic structures that surrounded and inspired him. In 1990 he relocated his studio to its current location in North Augusta in a building that once served that community as its jail. His long-ago decision to devote his life to painting was fateful. He has become a much-recognized painter whose work is represented in public and private collections around the world. He is a past recipient of a South Carolina Arts Commission Artist Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts/Southern Arts Federation Regional Fellowship. His paintings have been included in exhibitions at Babcock Galleries, New York; Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe; and Heath Gallery, Atlanta; among others. His work is included in the collections of the Gibbes Museum of Art, the Columbia Museum of Art, the South Carolina State Museum, the Greenville County Museum of Art in South Carolina; the Georgia Museum of Art and the Morris Museum of Art in Georgia; and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans.

The Morris Museum of Art, located on the Riverwalk in downtown Augusta, Georgia, is the first museum dedicated to the art and artists of the American South. The collection includes holdings of nearly 5,000 paintings, works on paper, photographs, and sculptures dating from the late-eighteenth century to the present. In addition to the permanent collection galleries, the museum hosts eight to ten temporary special exhibitions every year. The museum also houses the Center for the Study of Southern Art, a reference and research library that includes archives pertaining to artists working in the South. First incorporated as a nonprofit foundation in 1985, the Morris Museum of Art was established by William S. Morris III in memory of his parents William Shivers Morris, Jr,. and Florence Hill Morris. The purchase in 1989 of 230 paintings from the collection of Robert P. Coggins, a renowned collector of Southern art, established a focus and direction for the museum. Parts of Coggins's vast collection had been exhibited in museums around the country, and several other public institutions were vying for it when the purchase was made on behalf of the nascent Morris Museum. Another significant development of that year was the establishment of a reference library, which has evolved into the Center for the Study of Southern Art, an important reference resource. The Board of Trustees wrote and adopted the museum's mission statement in 1990, reflecting the museum's principal interest in the art and artists of the South. Also that year, Keith Claussen became the museum's acting director, and plans were first developed for adapting space in an office building, the Riverfront Center, to house the museum's growing collection. On September 26, 1992, the Morris Museum of Art opened its doors to the public and attracted more than ten thousand visitors in its first three months of operation. Since then, it has strived to fulfill its promise to make the language of artistic expression in the South accessible to a large and diverse audience through dozens of exhibitions and publications. The museum's education department has developed art education programs at many different grade levels in partnership with local school systems and has offered docent-led tours of the museum's holdings and exhibitions to thousands of visitors of all ages every year. The museum's public programs—whether storytelling sessions, readings, concerts, lectures, conversations with artists, or art-making workshops—have contributed to the renaissance of downtown Augusta. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.themorris.org

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