Multimedia exhibit made by 60 local artists to honor ‘remarkable women’ in SC history

One of the largest art shows created by and featuring women will take place in Columbia in September. “The Supper Table” is a multimedia, immersive exhibit that is a play on Judy Chicago’s iconic feminist installation by a similar name that turns 40 this year.

Like Chicago’s piece, “The Dinner Party,” which is still on display at the Brooklyn Museum, the local exhibit will recognize the lives and work of notable women in South Carolina history with painting, sculpture, theatre, film and photography.

Among the women to be featured are South Carolina greats, such as actor Eartha Kitt, abolitionist sisters Angelina and Sarah Grimke, athlete Althea Gibson and civil rights activist Modjeska Simkins. But project director Cindi Boiter, who taught women’s history at the University of South Carolina for many years, said she also wanted to include some lesser known figures.

Elizabeth Evelyn Wright, for example, founded Voorhees College in Denmark, South Carolina, but is often left out of history lessons, according to Boiter. And Mary McLeod Bethune, a child of formerly enslaved parents, founded Bethune Cookman University in Florida.

The exhibit is being created by a team of almost 60 local women artists, creating a large-scale celebration of the contributions of women to South Carolina. Writers, visual artists, filmmakers, playwrights and actors were all assigned to one of the women and told to create a place setting, a portrait, a work of theatre, a short film and a piece of writing about them. Dozens of community members also contributed to the work by creating and decorating 120 tiles emblazoned with the names of other important women in South Carolina history that will be on display with the table.

“I’m just trying to make up for a lot of lost time when women were not given their props,” Boiter said.

Of the 13 women to be honored in the exhibit, eight are women of color. Boiter said that was a natural result, since women of color and particularly black women have led many historic movements, such as those for civil rights and women’s rights.

Black writer and actor Alice Childress and civil rights activist Septima Clark will be honored at the table alongside Matilda Evans, the Aiken-born doctor who was the first black woman licensed to practice medicine in South Carolina. Other honorees include Sarah Leverette, a white attorney who was the first female law professor at USC and served as a lieutenant colonel in the S.C. wing of the Civilian Air Patrol in World War II, and novelist Julia Peterkin, who was born in Laurens County and is known for writing about the black experience as a white woman.

However, “The Supper Table” will also illustrate the progression of women by beginning its timeline with Eliza Pinckney, a white slaveholder who is crediting with transforming the colonial economy in the 1700s by cultivating and processing indigo. Pinckney was the first woman inducted into the South Carolina Business Hall of Fame in 1989.

Boiter said she wants “The Supper Table” to open up discussions about how white women and men have profited from the oppression of others, and particularly enslaved Africans and their descendants. Boiter said it was difficult to weigh the merits and downsides of including a slaveholder in the project, but the exhibit makes Pinckney’s history clear from the start.

“It introduces the issue of racial disparity from the beginning,” Boiter said.

“The Supper Table” will be presented to the public starting Friday, Sept. 6, with works of theatre, artist panels and installation of the table at Trustus Theatre. The presentation will then move to Harbison Theatre at Midlands Technical College on Sunday, Sept. 8.

The project will be on display at Stormwater Studios (413 Pendleton St.) in December, and in 2020 it will tour other parts of South Carolina, according to Boiter. She is still seeking a permanent home for “The Supper Table.”

Tickets for the Friday performance and exhibit at Trustus Theatre (520 Lady St.) are $50 and sold on brownpapertickets.com. Tickets for the presentation at Harbison Theatre (7300 College St.) are $15 in advance and can be purchased on harbisontheatre.org.

Correction, 3:20 p.m., Aug. 27: A previous version of this story was unclear about Sarah Leverette’s participation in World War II. She served as a lieutenant colonel in the South Carolina Civilian Air Patrol.

This story was originally published August 26, 2019 at 9:09 AM.