Face to Face: Portraits from the South Carolina State Museum Collection

Feb. 12 - July 24, 2022

This past exhibition at the South Carolina State Museum explored the visual expressions of human connections featured in works from the collection.

Just as there is a wide variety of ways in which we connect to one another, portraits offer a varied and fascinating view of one-on-one relationships. Face to Face highlighted these relationships with portraits that showed how portrait artists have posthumously portrayed the deceased, honored their idols, satirized and documented relationships through painting, ceramics and wood. The exhibition featured several new acquisitions not displayed before, including a portrait from award-winning Nigerian-American artist Adebunmi Gbadebo, whose works have been represented in the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture, the National Museum of African Art and other major collections.