(bright music) - I would argue the South then was undergoing a period of tremendous change and growth.

And that's still the case today.

- [Jason] Mint Museum's Senior Curator of American Art, Jonathan Stuhlman, leads a private tour group through the Mint's latest art exhibition, "Southern Modern, Rediscovering the Radical Art Below the Mason Dixon line."

- It brings works in from around 50 public and private collections all around the country.

And it's really the first show to look at art, to bring it all together, to look at it comprehensively, art from this period, from the region, which has really been largely absent from histories of American art.

- I knew I was gonna see Southern art, but I didn't realize the information I was going to learn.

- And believe me, it was beyond our expectation.

- The exhibit featuring more than 100 paintings and works on paper by notable artists from the American South during the first half of the 20th century is an exhibit that, ready for this?

Has been in the works for more than a decade.

- It's a show that I started thinking about, you know, not long after I got to the Mint and started digging into our collection.

And I started seeing works by artists that I thought, these are great paintings or prints or pastels or whatever.

They weren't part of my kind of traditional art historical background or classes in American art.

How come nothing's happened since then to kind of bring it together and celebrate it?

We consulted with many, many curators, museum directors, scholars, collectors, all throughout the region.

- He explained actually the process of bringing these artists together for this exhibit.

- The laundry to me kind of almost looks like flags that one would see on the lines of a boat.

- [Jason] The goal that Stuhlman set out to accomplish was to shine a light on the artists of the time and bringing their work to light and wanting people to think about the ways that Charlotte and the South were changing and growing at the time.

- But I learned a lot more about artists that were from the South or working in the South or influenced the way we see the South.

- It gives you a good perspective.

You don't know where you're going unless you know where you came from.

And this is a great exhibit to see how the area has changed and grown.

- When I found out today was that in textbooks, none of this is reflected.

And it's time that, you know, hopefully with exhibits like this that it will get introduced into, you know, the American art history.

- It was definitely cool.

It's something I haven't seen a lot.

So, I lived in New York for a while, moving to DC, so I've been around a lot of museums and I agree that kind of like Southern arts is underrepresented and it's nice to kind of see a cohesive body of work.

- Everyone coming together in the bargain basement here, looking at all the goods and picking things over and selecting things.

And it's a rare painting in which you see both Black and White populations together.

- [Jason] Sharon Portwood and her son Bryant, were part of the curator-led tour group.

As an artist himself, Bryant looks at things a little bit differently than the rest of us.

- So when I come in, the first thing I always look for is technique, just because that's the way my brain is wired.

So I'm really drawn to some of the paintings that I always find something admirable in them, whether it's their use of color, whether it's their technical ability in the application of paint.

- A lot of things, I look at 'em and I'm like, you know, I can't appreciate this.

What am I missing?

And the best thing he told me today was, look at the time, that people are such a product of their time.

And that was great advice because as you walk through the exhibits, you really do see, not just in the art, but in what people are expressing through their art.

- [Jason] The Southern Modern exhibit is broken into seven different sections covering new urban environments, the Jim Crow era, ritual and religion, many modernisms, a southern sampler, the enduring landscape, and planting new seeds, colonies and schools.

- And when we were picking the works, we first and foremost prioritized getting, you know, the strongest works of art that we could to represent the artists.

And, you know, instead of, you know, one could have gone through and said, okay, here's what's happening in North Carolina, here's what's happening in South Carolina, so on.

But we thought that wouldn't really make for the most compelling presentation.

So once we selected the works, we really just kinda started looking at them and we're thinking about what themes are emerging here?

What are we seeing kinda rising to the top in terms of the subjects, in terms of the approaches?

So people, again, from kind of all different walks of life, we've got the shop boy here who I think these are his shoes and his broom.

He's taken off his shoes to warm his feet by the fire and put the broom down by his stock over here.

- [Jason] As part of the selection process for the exhibit, the Mint wanted a wide array of artists at the time to be represented.

Being sure to include female artists as well as artists of color.

- Women were essential to not only the artistic communities here, but also kind of as cultural movers and shakers during the time.

So you think about the Mint Museum, for example, was founded by a group of women here in Charlotte in the 1930s.

- Many years ago in high school, I had a, I received an art degree.

And I will tell you this is very interesting because this was back in the sixties and we never touched upon Black artists, particularly the ones that we have seen today.

So it was a revelation for me.

- You know, really the visitor takeaway, we hope, is that they learn something new, they discover some artists they hadn't heard of, and maybe look into more, they have a broader appreciation for the culture going on in the South at the time.

I think, you know, we know more about music, the literature of the South during this era, but not so much the visual art.

And so that's, you know, we're hoping to add to that and really for this show to be a springboard for future scholarship and new ways of thinking about American art.