Art Museum

Artist Gaye Fisher knows the art museum of Myrtle Beach as well as anyone and she will talk about how this cultural jewel came to be as part of the free Family Day events Saturday at the museum. Family Day launches a yearlong celebration of the museum’s 15th anniversary.

Years before the museum opened in June 1997, Fisher, then president of the Waccamaw Arts and Crafts Guild, undertook to save Springmaid Villa, a large home in the Cabana section of Myrtle Beach. The house, built in 1924, had been sold to Elliot Springs and named Springmaid Villa. By 1975, development was closing in and the Springs family traded the house for a new home. Fortunately for posterity and the visual arts, Cox Construction Co. had not developed the property. “So in 1983,” according to the art museum’s account of its history, “abandoned at 5429 North Ocean Boulevard, the beautiful Springmaid Villa seemed to be waiting patiently to succumb to the fate of its neighbor, The Ocean Forest Hotel, torn down a decade earlier.”

Fisher had the vision for preservation of the landmark building and its resurrection as an art museum. Springmaid Villa was moved eight miles south on Ocean Boulevard to land -- not just any piece of property -- donated by Burroughs and Chapin. Thus the formal name of the museum, the Franklin G. Burroughs-Simeon B. Chapin Art Museum, which opened after 13 years of fundraising and construction of a wing, executive director Patricia Goodwin notes.

For the 2007 10th anniversary celebration, 14 Tibetan monks, here for a week, created a sand mandala. Some monks will be on hand Saturday and are scheduled for chanting at 2:30 p.m. to close the day’s events. “We wanted to celebrate some of our exhibits” of the museum’s first 15 years, Goodwin says. For example, a butterfly project is one of several workshops Saturday. That recalls the 2005 project in which children made butterflies in honor of the 1.5 million children who perished in the Holocaust. The butterflies were done during an exhibit, “The Last Album: Eyes from the Ashes of Auschwitz-Birkenau.” The museum has ongoing programs for children, reaching as many as 1,000 a year. “We’re art on the wall, but we’re so much more than art on the wall,” Goodwin says.

Family Day has “something for everybody -- you can be three or 83.” The events of the day are in addition to three exhibits in the museum’s galleries: “William Jameson: Woodland Textures” (18 oil paintings); “From Tree to Treasure: An International Invitational Exhibition of Turned or Sculpted Wood” and “Wish You Were Here A Photographic Essay by Farnell & Powell.”

Residents and visitors are indeed fortunate to have the Art Museum -- thanks to the vision of Gaye Fisher and many others and the continuing support of organizations such as Burroughs & Chapin Company Inc. which is sponsoring Free Family Day. Other “I (Heart) Art” celebrations upcoming include a juried exhibition of high school students’ work and a children’s art auction, an oceanview putt-putt course and an art-to-wear and hair runway competition.