OHC NEWSLETTER
April, May and June 2025
The Unusual Story of the Okefenokee Heritage Center and Southern Forest World,
written by Susan Lott Clark
(Article abridged by Carla Cornett)
An appreciation for the arts in their various forms – visual, music, and drama – first gave support to having the Okefenokee Heritage Center. We recognized the importance for cultural enrichment and enhancing the quality of life in this area.
Led by Dr. and Mrs. Robert C. Smith, we insisted on having art exhibits from local and national sources that would change periodically. On the architect’s earliest drawings of room space, the Smith’s had named the entrance the Galler-ia. We insisted on a higher ceiling for better visibility of the visual arts displayed in that area.
A few years after the award of the first grant by the GCA, we received notice that a representative, Ms. Jane Feiler of Savannah, would like to come visit the Heritage Center to evaluate our art activities. One of her first questions was if we could see any difference in the appreciation of art in the area since our opening. Our response was that prior to our opening we Trustees could recall only one art exhibit, at least since the 1930s, that had ever been held in Waycross. It was a display of paintings that was hung for a short time in the 1980s in a few empty rooms of a home for nurses near the local hospital on State Street. It had been fairly well attended. Someone added that the first reception honoring individual artists after the Heritage Center opened, we had only two attendees other than Trustees, but by the time of Ms. Feiler’s visit we were having as many as fifteen to twenty-five on an average.
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