FOCUS: Halsey Institute’s Southbound wins national $25,000 award

Staff reports  | A 2018 book of photographs of the South by the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston  has won the 2019 Alice Award, a $25,000 prize given annually by Furthermore to a richly-illustrated book that “makes a valuable contribution to its field and demonstrates high standards of production.”

The book, Southbound: Photographs of and about the New South, accompanied the Halsey Institute’s 2018 exhibition of the same name. The book was edited and included an introduction by the exhibition curators, Mark Sloan and Mark Long, and designed by Gil Shuler Graphic Design. The catalogue contains contributions by Nikky Finney, Eleanor Heartney, William Ferris, John T. Edge and Rick Bunch. The Southbound project comprises 56 photographers’ visions of the South over the first decades of the 21st century. The photographs are accompanied by stories that provide the reader with a sense of place. 

“We are thrilled to be in the company of The Getty [Museum] and the Block Museum of Art of Northwestern University,” said Sloan, the Halsey’s director and chief curator. “The selection of the Southbound catalogue as the overall winner 2019 Alice Award is one of the greatest distinctions we have received in our 25 years of publishing. We are proud of the interdisciplinary nature of the Southbound project and how that is reflected in the publication.”

The exhibition is on tour.  It recently opened at the Gregg Museum of Art & Design in Raleigh, N.C., and at Duke University’s Power Plant Gallery in neighboring Durham.  It will remain on the road through 2021 with stops in Chattanooga; Meridian, Miss.; Baton Rouge; Lake City, S.C.; and Conway, Ark.

“The Southbound photographs open a window onto our relationship with place, a fundamental part of the human condition,” said Southbound co-curator Mark Long.  “The Alice Award recognizes the startling, beautiful and thought-provoking work of the artists involved; but it also acknowledges the complexity of place that necessitates the perspectives, too, of historians, folklorists, critics, geographers, and poets. Perhaps the most exciting thing about the catalogue is how it will allow the ideas and images at the heart of Southbound to echo forward long after the travelling exhibition ends, and the imprimatur of the Alice Award will be invaluable in that sense.”

An awards event at the Strand Bookstore in New York City will be held Oct. 28, 2019.

• Click here to learn more about the Southbound project.
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