Kiawah Art and House Tour

If ever you have spent a sun-dappled April afternoon sojourning between the inspiring homes featured on the annual Kiawah Art and House Tour, you already know it is a charitable affair with multiple benefits for all participants. The collective efforts of those who organize, sponsor, and publicize this one-of-a-kind tour under the auspices of The Gibbes Museum of Art, have yielded a proceeds number as stunning as the homes themselves – nearly $715,000 – all to benefit the venerable Charleston art museum’s enhancement programs.

How can an event, which lasts just four hours a year, continue to be such a fundraising star? The tour’s publicity chair Susan Palmer insists it’s because the Kiawah Island Art and House Tour is as singular as Kiawah Island.

First, there’s the art, broadly categorized as architecture, interior design, antiques, traditional media art, sculpture, and even “artistic plotting” (the six homes on the tour are sited to take advantage of a multifarious array of Kiawah environments). In just one home on the 2010 tour, visitors will marvel at the intricate beauty of period Georgian and Swedish Gustavian antique furniture, 18th-century European paintings, Mark Catesby botanicals, antique duck decoys, and porcelain and tole flowers created by Vladimir Kanevsky, this generation’s Fabergé. Another home features works by nationally recognized Charleston painter John Carroll Doyle and Fred, another Charleston artist originally from Belgium, as well as a collection of original Venetian masks and marionettes. A third home comes alive through an eclectic collection of Haitian and Southwestern art, as well as intriguing contemporary Vietnamese paintings.

Beyond art, there is astounding “art-chitecture.” The tour’s fascinating “green” house was sited for maximum southern exposure and views of Blue Heron Pond. Sustainable, energy-efficient living with insulated concrete-form construction and walls clad in American clay are its mainstays. Another home at Cassique celebrates the British Arts and Crafts architectural movement of the late 1800s and early 1900s, and showcases interior elements that pay homage to the western coast of Scotland. Yet another tour home thrives in an artful setting of lovely live oaks, with sunset views across The River Course.

In addition to art and architecture, the tour is also distinguished by its interesting property owners, many of whom join docents on the premises to tell their stories. “These are homeowners with great lifestyle sophistication,” Palmer says. “Even though most own property elsewhere, these are their dream homes. They bring a remarkable sensibility to furnishing their Kiawah abodes, bringing the beauty of previous homes, their collections, and their family heirlooms together in one place.”

The tour also features a sealed-bid auction of a Jill Hooper oil painting and a Mary Whyte watercolor (now on display at the Gibbes Museum) with bids accepted until 6:00 p.m. on tour day. Gibbes visitors can also see three exhibits made possible by past tour proceeds – “Ancestry and Innovation: African American Art”; “Brian Rutenberg: Tidesong”; and “Dafuskie Island,” photographs by Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, tennis great Arthur Ashe’s widow. Light refreshments will be served at the Cassique Clubhouse, and Freshfields Village will of course welcome tour-goers for lunch and shopping.

A limit of 500 tour tickets, which includes admission to The Gibbes Museum, are available for $55 each at Kiawah Island Real Estate offices at Freshfields and at the Main Gate on Kiawah, as well as by phone at 843-722-2706, ext. 18. The 2010 Kiawah Art and House Tour is open April 9th, from 2:00 until 6:00 p.m. For more information, please visit the Gibbes Museum online at http://www.gibbesmuseum.org/events, or Gibbes Etc. at http://www.gibbesetc.org.