The Ernest A. Finney, Jr. Cultural Arts Center is hosting a drop-in Open House on Thursday, August 15th from 6:00 to 8:00 PM for the community at-large as it launches a $2 million capital campaign to transform the former Southern Electric Company historical building, originally a tobacco warehouse from the 1940s, into a gathering place for people of all ages who view art as community building.

The Finney Center will break ground on the renovation this fall, using a plan developed by the Boudreaux architectural firm. It will include a stage with seating for 200, which can be opened to the outdoors, an exhibition space with a 360-degree view, a dance floor, studio rooms, and other spaces for multidisciplinary endeavors.

Ernest A. Finney, Jr. Cultural Arts Center Planned Renovation

Bounded by two historic districts, the Robert Mills District and the Waverly District, The Finney Center connects the heart of the African American community, past and present, to an ever-changing downtown Columbia, South Carolina. It is housed in a former tobacco warehouse from the 1940s, which was renovated and repurposed in the 1960s for the offices of the Southern Electric Company.

Director and Poet Nikky Finney

“Black Philanthropy Month is an annual August reminder for us in the Black community to look behind and to also look ahead,” says Director and Poet Nikky Finney. “Both my paternal and maternal grandparents taught me that it was just fine to focus on my own dreams as long as I also donated time, attention, and money to the community in which I lived, worked, and dreamed, making sure it too prospered. Join us at The Finney Center on August 15th as we host an Open House for our community. We want to share with you more about what’s been going on in 2024 and what’s ahead for 2025 and beyond.”

About The Ernest A. Finney, Jr. Cultural Arts Center

The Ernest A. Finney, Jr. Cultural Arts Center is a 501c3 organization located at 1510 Laurens Street, Columbia, South Carolina. The focus of this Cultural Arts Center is on the making of art, the keeping of community, living Black history, and the ongoing generational celebration of music, visual art, poetry, dance, theatre, the culinary arts, and other community building and life sustaining activities.The Ernest A. Finney, Jr. Cultural Arts Center is an incubator for progressive notions of what it means to be an involved, informed, and engaged creative human being, no matter that human being’s age or background. 

About Nikky Finney

Nikky Finney is a nationally-acclaimed South Carolina-born poet and author of On Wings Made of Gauze; Rice; The World Is Round; and Head Off & Split, which won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2011. A graduate of Talladega College, Finney taught at the University of Kentucky for 23 years and holds a Carolina Distinguished Professorship and the John H. Bennett, Jr. Chair in Creative Writing and Southern Studies at the University of South Carolina. Nikky Finney is the daughter of the late SC Chief Justice Ernest A. Finney, Jr., for whom the Ernest A. Finney, Jr. Cultural Arts Center is named.