Upcoming Exhibitions
The Bascom’s major exhibitions highlight the work of the artists who live and work in our region, Bascom instructors and students, Artist Fellows and Residents, as well as world-renowned artists whose work might not otherwise be seen in this region. The Bascom's 3 galleries and the Winkler Sculpture and Nature Trail are host to approximately 10 exhibitions each year, which pair with our Outreach and Education departments to attract 20,000 visitors to The Bascom. Free guided tours are available upon advanced request.
The Bascom Annual Theme: Place
As makers and creators, human beings experience the world as both a place given to them and as a place they can mark, shape, and mold. The places that become homes to us offer familiarity, comfort, and even companionship. Places seem to have their own identities – they act on us, call us to them, invite response. Many creative acts seem to emanate from the experience of place – a stunning landscape or a quiet interior can express or even recall the sense of a place.
Art itself can both represent a place (e.g., Monet’s Giverny) or become part of a place-making activity (e.g.,Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Surrounded Islands). The act of place-making can be both literal (building a house) and imaginative (Alice in Wonderland).
The year’s theme invites us to consider place and places as sources of beauty, as generators of community and belonging, as locations that invite response. Works shared this year celebrate the human experience of place and its resonance in art forms.
The theme of place also invites us to consider places as sources of longing, loss, separation, and dis-placement. As such, viewers are able to consider the ambivalence of the places we love – the ways in which we are too attached, or too detached from the land, the people, and the communities we inhabit.
As you consider the theme of place this year, we invite you to find moments to see, think, do, and be, in this place, our Bascom home in the western mountains of North Carolina.
- ARTIST(S): Beate Sass, Brent Martin, Eric William Carroll, Erik Mace, Frances Bukovsky, Kaye Savage, Mike Belleme, Raymond Thompson Jr, Susan Alta Martin, Susan Patrice, Yvonne Dalschen
- ON DISPLAY: December 15, 2022
- THROUGH: January 7, 2023
- MEDIUM(S): Photography
Listening to the Land is a nine-month photography exploration of the Bartram Trail near Highlands, NC. Influenced by the legacy of William Bartram, photographers of all levels will be invited to enter an intimate world where the landscape is alive and waiting to be met, understood, and loved. Through workshops and dynamic online engagement, Kinship will help photographers cultivate a faithful conversation with the land that explores the rich biodiversity of place while honoring each photographer’s unique way of seeing and responding to the land.
Listening to the Land will open in December 2022 with an inspiring project-shaping exhibition featuring the work of 6-10 core Kinship photographers created in response to a designated section of the Bartram trail. The exhibition will introduce our community to the Kinship team and serve as the project’s launch.
This nine-month grassroots visual conversation will be curated into a culminating community exhibition in fall of 2023 that maps participants conversation with the land while revealing the delicate ecosystems that often go unobserved in public greenspaces. Here, viewers are invited to step into an intimate world where landscape images are revealed not as objects to be admired but as intimate portraits of a sovereign and alive place waiting to be met, cared for, and loved.
Featured Artists: Beate Sass, Brent Martin, Eric William Carroll, Erik Mace, Frances Bukovsky, Kaye Savage, Mike Belleme, Raymond Thompson Jr, Susan Alta Martin, Susan Patrice, and Yvonne Dalschen
To learn more about Kinship Photography Collective, please click here.
Funding for photo printing provided by Wild Azalea Garden Club
Photocredit: Yvonne Dalschen
- GALLERY: Thompson Gallery
- ARTIST(S): Kimberly English
- ON DISPLAY: January 21, 2023
- THROUGH: April 8, 2023
- MEDIUM(S): Fiber Arts
The Bascom Winter Resident Artist Program, better known as the W.R.A.P., calls on Students or Faculty from the surrounding universities to submit site-specific installation proposals for The Bascom’s unique and beautiful Thompson Gallery.
- GALLERY: Joel Gallery
- ARTIST(S): To be announced
- ON DISPLAY: April 22, 2023
- THROUGH: August 5, 2023
- MEDIUM(S): Photography
Each year The Bascom’s Photography Artist in Residence Program brings in educator-artists who offer new insights to our signature STEAM-focused curriculum, integrating basic skills in science, technology, engineering and math with the arts.
The Bascom's Spring 2023 Artist in Residence will be announced soon.
Image credit: Byron Tenesaca, 2016 Photographer in Residence
- GALLERY: Bunzl Gallery
- ARTIST(S): Various
- ON DISPLAY: January 21, 2023
- THROUGH: May 5, 2023
- MEDIUM(S): Various
The Bascom is proud to present our fourth annual Emergence: A Survey of Southeastern Studio Programs, formerly known as 100 Miles.
Current Exhibitions
Outdoor Sculpture 2022 - 2023
2022 marks the second year of annual outdoor sculpture exhibit outside on The Bascom Campus.
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Like No Other Place: Photographs of the Highlands-Cashiers Land Trust
Explore The Bascom's 2022 theme of "Place" through the lens of Highlands-Cashiers Land Trust properties. Our mountains are among some of the oldest in the world. Over time,...
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Lasting Impressions
Lasting Impressions presents sixty of the finest Japanese prints in the Read-Simms Collection at the Gibbes Museum of Art.
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Craft to Art Series: Tapping into Tone
Our fifth installment in our Craft to Art series covers Musical Instruments and their history of use, importance in defining regional culture, material construction, and...
See MoreTHE BASCOM WOULD LIKE TO THANK OUR 2022 EXHIBITION SPONSORS
YEAR-ROUND
Claire + Alex Crumbley
Cathy + Bob Fisher
Dianne + Myron Mall
Heath Massey + John Mitchener
EXHIBIT SPONSORS
Dan + Marty Boone, Hillary Cone, Margaret + Dallas Denny, Lynn DeVault + Glo Ghegan, Lisa + Carlos Evans, Carol Misner + Ann Huckstep, Jane Jerry, Lucy + Jack Kuhne, Nancy + Charles Lichtman, Marianne + Mark Mahaffey, Butchie + Alan Neely, C. Marie Sharpe, Marcia + Charlie Weber, Woodcrest Foundation, Ann Wrobleski + Phil Truluck
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Visit: 323 Franklin Road
Highlands, NC 28741 (Map It)
Call: 828-526-4949 (Main)
828-787-2892 (Ceramics Studio)
Funded in part by a grant from South Arts
in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.