‘Picturing Freedom: Harriet Tubman and the Combahee River Raid’ exhibit on display at Gibbes Museum

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCBD) – A new exhibition on display at the Gibbes Museum of Art in downtown Charleston honors work detailing Harriet Tubman and the Combahee River Raid.

The “Picturing Freedom: Harriet Tubman and the Combahee River Raid,” a historic and inspiring collection three years in the making, is a visionary multimedia exhibition inspired by a Pulitzer Prize-winning book. 

“It’s a story during some periods of time was suppressed, simply because it led to the freedom of so many enslaved people, over 700 people achieved their freedom because of this raid,” said Angela Mack is The Gibbes Museum’s president and CEO. “It’s an exhibition that we started working on in 2022. It began with an early conversation with Dr. Edda Fields-Black, who has published an extensive study and fabulous book on Harriet Tubman and the Combahee River Raid, revealing information and materials that didn’t exist before in book form, scouring archives and doing interviews and piecing together a story that is so important to our region and filling the gaps for what happened here.”

The book details a previously untold chapter in our country’s history. 

In 1863, Harriet Tubman became the first woman to lead a major military operation in the United States. She and 150 African American Union soldiers rescued more than 700 slaves in the Combahee Ferry Raid in Beaufort and Colleton counties during the Civil War.

Mack says the exhibition brings to life the heroic raid. “The exhibition provides a visual perspective to this story, with the help of our guest curator, Dr. Vanessa Thaxton-Ward. We have brought together works of art by various artists, who have provided visual imagery on Harriet Tubman as well as on the Combahee River Raid itself.”

Dr. Vanessa Thaxton-Ward is the director of the Hampton University Museum and guest curator for the Gibbes exhibit.

“This is a fantastic opportunity to bring to life a history book, the opportunity to bring together all kinds of artifacts, material culture, paintings, photography, historic photographs, as well as quilts to tell the story of Harriet Tubman and her achievements,” she said.

The exhibition also includes multimedia, oral history, re-enactments, works on paper, sculptures, and decorative art pieces. 

Thaxton-ward says, “It’s more to Harriett Tubman than we know, and her legacy is shown through this exhibition. I don’t think a lot of people knew about the raid. I don’t think people really knew how well-connected, and how special Harriet Tubman is and was. We hear the standard story, she was the Moses of our people, but the other thing she did as well. To find these connections, and see this story come alive was really important, and I think to do an exhibition with art for the person who is not a history buff, or may not want to read this fantastic book, but it’s pretty large, they will come see the exhibition, and then decide I want to find out more, and they’re going to go pick up that book.”

With 45 hand-picked works of art from institutions and private collections across the country, Mack says this is the first grouping of works of this size and scope presented this way, honoring Harriet Tubman throughout more than 100 years of American art. 

When asked how she feels to be able to honor Harriet Tubman and bring her story to the Gibbes for the masses, Mack says, “Oh, it means everything. We have been working on untold stories in this region for two decades, and to culminate and have this particular story revealed after so many years is exciting. I’m standing here right now, and I have goose bumps, because I’m in this space, and looking at these works of art, and there is nothing like looking at original works of art to really provide you with an experience related to this story.”

The exhibition opened in late May and runs through October 5th. 

For more information about the exhibition, admission, and hours for The Gibbes, go to gibbesmuseum.org.