Upcountry History Museum

Pigskin Peanuts
2021-01-17 - 2021-04-18
January 16 – April 17, 2021
Lucy first pulled the football away from Charlie Brown on November 16, 1952. Known as “The Fall Classic” it became a rite of autumn in American pop culture. The annual “pulling away of the football” was shown nearly every year through the run of the Peanuts comic strip. Artist Charles M. Schulz created nearly 50 years of unique endings to the famous football gag.
The Upcountry History Museum in partnership with the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center will host Pigskin Peanuts, a retrospective exhibition that examines Schulz’s love of the game. Greenville, South Carolina will be the final stop on the Pigskin Peanuts international tour.
The 3000 square foot exhibit showcases Peanuts football-themed comic strips, artifacts and ephemera to illustrate how sports, specifically football, evolved and played a role in the Peanuts comics.
Charlie Brown’s missed kick wasn’t the only Peanuts football story. The exhibition, divided into five sections, examines the evolution of football in the Peanuts stories including Vintage Pigskin, The Fall Classic, Snoopy’s Gridiron Tales, Woodstock Plays Football, and Girls Rule (Sally, Peppermint Patty and Marcie).

Framed Step Into Art
2021-02-27 - 2021-06-18
The Upcountry History Museum will continue its mission of connecting young audiences with hands-on STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math) learning experiences when it hosts Framed: Step Into Art.
The bilingual (English and Spanish), exhibition transforms the works of well-known painters into interactive environments. Children ages 3-12, enter the exhibit by stepping though an oversized frame and are immersed in the worlds created by well-known artists. Each work is re-created as a three-dimensional, sensory, walk-in environment that includes a print of the artist’s original work as well as important facts about the artist’s life and painting style.
Supporting the National Standards for Arts Education for K through 5th grade, the exhibit provides conversational prompts that employ visual thinking strategies. Children explore the works of four specific artists, as well as enter a Mona Lisa Gallery where they discover a print of the original painting along with famous parodies, and step behind a a cutout version replacing Mona Lisa’s face with their own.

The exhibition’s four interactive spaces include:

Dinner for Threshers by Grant Wood explores rural life at the turn of the century inviting children to tend to the chickens and eggs, prepare a seasonal meal, set the table, and mix and match the farmers patterned shirts.

Camp at Lake O’Hara by John Singer Sargent invites visitors to Sargent’s 1916 camp in the Canadian Rockies. Children climb inside a tent, explore camping gear like Sargent’s, prepare a meal over the campfire, and create a painting of what today’s campsite might look like.

Corn Festival by Diego Rivera visitors travel to Mexico through this piece from the Court of Fiestas in the Ministry of Education Building in Mexico City. Children explore a rendition of one of Rivera’s frescos, add flowers and ribbons to the flower tower for a celebration and add their flourish to a miniature building mural.

Big Chicken by Clementine O’Hara visitors meet Louisiana’s most famous female artist and folk-art icon and create imaginary animals like Hunter’s “goosters”! Children load the cart and climb behind the reins of Hunter’s giant rooster to take the load into town.

In addition to climbing inside works of art, children are invited to curate their own exhibit gallery, draw self-portraits, take part in an art/history hunt through the exhibit and create different images at a three-dimensional pattern puzzle.

Salley Mavor: Social Fabric
2021-03-30 10:00 - 2021-09-04 17:00 (America/New_York)
Open NOW through September 4, 2021
Award winning fiber artist Salley Mavor (born 1955) has spent four decades developing her signature style and working methods, carving out her own niche within the children’s book world and the fiber art community. Mavor’s three-dimensional embroidered tableaus have been used as children’s book illustrations, social commentary, and stop-motion animation.
A Rhode Island School of Design illustration major, Salley left traditional mediums behind, preferring to communicate her ideas with sculptural needlework. From her home studio in Falmouth, Massachusetts, she has illustrated 11 picture books using her distinctive blend of materials and hand stitching techniques. Salley has roots in South Carolina, as her maternal grandmother, Louise Hartwell, (nee Salley) was born and raised in Orangeburg.
For Salley Mavor, a needle is her tool, thread her medium, and stitches are her marks. Mavor’s needlework’s are narrative and sculptural and are presented as miniature stage sets with scenery, props and characters assembled on fabric backdrops in shadow boxes.
The Upcountry History Museum is honored to partner with Salley on a second exhibition project, titled Salley Mavor: Social Fabric. Exploring the irony, tragedy, and beauty of humanity as it “unravels and mends throughout history” the exhibition provides a unique opportunity for visitors of all ages to experience the three-dimensional quality of Salley’s storytelling. Visitors will peek into imagined miniature worlds full of characters, props, and scenery all stitched by hand, and all focused on the importance of social connectivity.
Social Fabric explores cultural diversity, migration, fashion, the natural world, and a range of social narratives, from the everyday to topical subjects. Oversized bas-relief scenarios, presented in shadow box frames, are designed to create conversations between the artist and her audience. For Salley Mavor her wish is that visitors will “connect to Social Fabric in personal and meaningful ways.”
