Biblical Art for a Former Church Turned Museum
Annette Rigdon Swan, Mary and Martha
The Manifold Greatness exhibit’s visit to Tifton, Georgia, is the joint effort of the Tifton-Tift County Public Library and the Tifton Museum of Arts and Heritage. When I came back from the Washington, DC, training session at the Folger Shakespeare Library with my big white notebook full of information, one of the first things that a member of the museum board said to me was, “The panels take up 600 square feet and the museum is 3500 square feet. What are we going to do so it looks like we have something in the building?”
It was felt that we had a unique opportunity with this exhibit, because the museum once was a Methodist church, complete with fabulous stained glass windows and the most beautiful wooden ceiling, crafted by skilled Yankee shipbuilders a long way from home. After some discussion and phone calls and negotiating, the museum board decided that an art exhibit would be an appropriate accompaniment. They chose three artists, all of whom are well known in the community, knowing that an exhibit containing works by these artists would attract their fans.
Minnie G. Brown’s Nativity, flanked by kneelers from St. Anne’s Episcopal Church
Minnie G. Brown’s works hang in the First Baptist Church and First Presbyterian here in Tifton, as well as in the United Methodist Church in Ashburn, home of the annual Fire Ant Festival. Annette Rigdon Swan was a local art teacher for many years and at 92 years of age still produces paintings to commemorate special occasions in her friends’ lives. Her twelve paintings of women in the Bible that grace the exhibit come to us from their permanent home at First Methodist Church in Tifton.
Vincent Keesee, Let the Little Children Come to Me
Vincent Keesee’s oil paintings are an interesting contrast to traditional Biblical art. Dr. Keessee is inspired by parables and Bible stories and puts them in rural Georgia settings and he did some of the paintings especially for this occasion.
These paintings are amusing, often provocative, and make an offbeat and quirky contribution to a display that could have become quite heavy and pedantic. Most of the characters in his paintings are inspired by people he knows. Two of the congregants in the painting “Let the Little Children Come to Me” came to the museum to see themselves and explain to me who the other people in the picture were.
To contrast with the vertical surfaces created by the panels and the hanging paintings, three small displays, each containing a wonderful object, were created that sit on pedestals. Fabulously hand-worked kneelers borrowed from St. Anne’s Episcopal Church add more texture (see photo above).
Swedish pulpit Bible from a Swedish Lutheran congregation in Naugatuck
Music from the period is played while the exhibit is open to the public to provide “ear candy.” We set up a touch-activated kiosk that works exactly like the one at the Folger Shakespeare Library did and you can sit and watch the Manifold Greatness YouTube videos in a little nook we made in the back.
It all fills the space very nicely.
To see how the Manifold Greatness panels and the art exhibit work together, take a look at the second photo (scroll down to see it) in our recent quarto-making blog post.
Vickie Horst is the Manager of Tifton-Tift County Public Library in Tifton, Georgia.
Manifold Greatness blog 