Last year marked some major anniversaries from Lillian Smith: the 80th anniversary of her first novel Strange Fruit, the 75th of her memoir Killers of the Dream, and the 70th of her memoir The Journey. Over the course of the year we have done numerous things to celebrate these anniversaries, including events such as “Celebrating Lillian E. Smith” in the spring and articles in the Atlanta Journal Constitution and Augusta Magazine, among other things. However, even with all of the things we have done this year, the most meaningful event for me has to be the Lillian E. Smith: 80th Anniversary Exhibition I co-curated with our museum director, Rebecca Brantley. This exhibition has been something we’ve talked about doing for a few years, and this year we finally did it.

As we conceived of the exhibition, we thought about various aspects of Smith’s life and work that could serve as the focal point. Our first idea, and one which we maintained in the exhibit, centered around Smith as collector. We know Smith as an activist, as a writer, as an artist. However, we do not see much about Smith as a collector and appreciator of art in her own right. When Dick McCutchen asked Smith, during a 1962 interview, if she found it hard, due to her fame, to conduct conversations with individuals. To his inquiry, Smith replied,

This is too hard. You go anywhere, you go to a party and the first thing they say to you is something about race, something about segregation. And sometimes I’m polite, but sometimes I’m not. Sometimes I have a real outburst and I’ll say, do you know that my deepest interests are philosophy and poetry and music and painting? Those are my deepest interests, the ones that mean more to me as Lillian Smith.

At her core, Smith saw herself as an artist and as a lifelong learner and appreciator of art. She fought segregation and white supremacy, because she felt it was her moral duty to fight them, but she did get frustrated at the fact that individuals viewed her solely as a race writer, ignoring her artistic abilities and her intellectual curiosity.

Thinking about the exhibit, we wanted to highlight Smith’s “deepest interests” in art, specifically in its material forms. As such, we curated part of the exhibit with artistic pieces from her collection, specifically paintings from Constance McMillan, who did the illustrations for Memory of A Large Christmas, and lithographs from Stanton Forbes. Along with these works, we also incorporated various material objects from Smith’s travles, notably figures from her time in China, carved statues from her trip to South America, and items from her trips to India, along with personal items such as her driver’s license, typewriter, and inkwell.

As we continued to talk about the exhibit, we discovered that we wanted to provide attendees to the the exhibit with multiple entry points into Smith, not just Smith as collector and appreciator of art. We had to include her work as director of Laurel Falls Camp for Girls and her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. With that in mind, after visitors experience Smith as collector they move through the exhibit and encounter her these other two aspects of Smith.

Moving forward, visitors encounter three banners that we created with the Southern Literary Trail (SLT). These banners depict Smith’s work during the Civil Rights Movement, focusing on her friendship with Martin Luther King, Jr. One banner has information about her 1949 memoir Killers of the Dream. Another has a quote from King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail where he praises Smith, and the final one has King’s telegram to Smith’s family upon her death in 1966. These banners encapsulate, in a consice manner, Smith’s role in the movement and her impact. The SLT created there own banners for a traveling exhibit that will move to various sites on the SLT. The first stop was at the Joel Chandler Harris’ Wren’s Nest in Atlanta where I spoke about Smith and King.

The three banners appear on their own at the end of the top floor, surrounded by three stunning vinyl pieces that cover each of the three walls in the space. Facing the middle wall, we had a picture of Screamer Mountain, as it looks from the back deck of the common room. To the left, a wall-sided vinyl piece depicts Smith’s office in the common room with her typewriter, pictures, address cards, and more. On the right, an image of her library, which also served as the camp library, resides. The log bookshelves sag with Smith’s library, a lifetime of learning encaspulated in the image while personal photographs of Smith and Paula Snelling, along with other family members, adorn the side tables beside the couch.

Moving back towards the front of the exhibit, visitors encounter a portable speaker that contains some recordings of Smith and Snelling. The recordings are part of the records we found at the camp and were able to get digitized, through a Recordings at Risk grant from the Council of Library Information Resources. In the exhibit we wanted to highlight Smith’s work at Laurel Falls Camp for Girls; however, space did not allow us to really have any artifacts about the camp. So, we decided to feature some recordings from the camp at this point, notably a recoridng of Smith leading campers on a scavenger hunt set up by the camp trickster figure Buss Eye in the gym. You can listen to these recordings on Dope with Lime.

The final part of the exhibit contains images from myself and two former residents at the center, Tommye Scanlin and Mark Albertin. While the first part of the exhibit focuses on Smith as collector, the final section focuses on Smith’s continued legacy as an artist through the production of art by individuals who came after her and drew inspiration from the space. Scanlin’s piece is a wall tapestry inspired by the chimney, the lone remaing structure of the camp gym. The piece is entitled “Because of Memory,” after the inscription on Smith’ stombstone, which rests beside the chimney. The inscription, from The Journey, reads, “Death can kill a man, that is all it can do to him. It cannot end his life because of memory.” Albertin’s photographs, in black and white, capture the natural beauty and light of the space. The exhibit has an photograph of the director’s cottage/library and two images of the mountain laurels and the landscape. My images, in color, highlight the chimney garden and wildlife, notably a snail on a rock.

While it has taken us a few years to construct this exhibit, I am beyond proud of the work that Rebecca and I did for this exhibit. None of this would have been possible without her work and vision, along with the work of others in the art department, namely Santanu Majumdar who did the wall vinyls. I hope that you will have the opportunity to see this exhibit in person at some point. It will be up through May 2025. However, if you can’t see it in person, we are working to hopefully bring it to you virtually so you can enjoy the exhibit from the comfort of your home.

Until then, what are your thoughts? As always, let me know in the comments below. Make sure to follow me on Bluesky @silaslapham.