The Charleston Museum presents the second installment of its 2015 Fall Lecture Series, “By the Rivers of Babylon: The Lowcountry Basket in Slavery and in Freedom.”

Dale Rosengarten has been studying the tradition of African American coiled basketry since 1984. As guest curator for the McKissick Museum at the University of South Carolina, she developed the exhibition and catalog Row Upon Row: Sea Grass Baskets of the South Carolina Lowcountry (1986), which enjoyed a twenty-year run as a traveling show. Her doctoral dissertation (Harvard University, 1997) placed the Lowcountry basket in a global setting and led to a partnership with the Museum for African Art in New York. With co-curator Enid Schildkrout, she produced the exhibit and book Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art (2008). Pursuing her other field of research, southern Jewish history and culture, Rosengarten founded the Jewish Heritage Collection at the College of Charleston Library. In collaboration with the McKissick Museum, she curated the exhibition A Portion of the People: Three Hundred Years of Southern Jewish Life (2002), and with her husband, Theodore Rosengarten, co-edited the accompanying volume.

Sarah Edwards-Hammond

Sarah Edwards-Hammond is a native of Mount Pleasant, SC, who carries on a basket making tradition brought from West Africa by slaves over 300 years ago. She started making sweetgrass baskets at age 7, taught by her mother, the late Mrs. Estelle Edwards, who was taught the craft by her mother. Sarah enjoys teaching adults and children the art of weaving these beautiful heirloom baskets and delights in seeing their finished work. She is on the South Carolina Arts Commission Approved Artist Roster and on the board of directors of the Sweetgrass Cultural Arts Festival.