Charles Harbison
Hickory Museum of Art reopens with a season of exhibitions
that honor the past while looking to the future.
Follow The Golden Thread through your new museum.
September 6, 2026 - January 31, 2027
Whitener, Shuford, Coe, engageHMA,
and 3rd Floor Galleries
Marking its grand return after a year-long transformation, Hickory Museum of Art (HMA) is making a stylish grand return. HMA has partnered with acclaimed fashion designer Charles Harbison to “dress the museum” for a spectacular inaugural exhibition. For the first time in HMA’s 80-year history, a single guest artist will exhibit on all three floors. Harbison’s showcase, The Women, anchors HMA’s reopening theme, The Golden Thread—a celebration that honors our rich history while looking ahead to the future.
At the heart of the exhibition are four custom silhouettes created by Harbison, each inspired by specific paintings he selected from HMA’s permanent collection. These new works will sit alongside defining pieces from the Harbison Studio Archives and some of the designer’s most famous red-carpet moments—including Met Gala looks for Simone Biles, Mindy Kaling, Audra McDonald and John Imah. All looks will be paired with paintings and sculpture from the museum’s collection including works by Roy Lichtenstein, Juan Logan, Robert Motherwell, Selma Burke, and Alexander Calder.
Harbison’s work will be paired with paintings and sculpture from HMA’s Collection. Anya Fisher [1905-1992], Female, gouache on paper, From the Collection of Barry and Allen Huffman, Gift, 2015.23.
Simone Biles at the Met Gala on May 5, 2025.
Courtesy of Harbison Studio
About the Artist
Based in Los Angeles, Charles Harbison is the creative force behind harbison.studio, a modern luxury design house built on an ethos of optimistic luxury, gender fluidity, cultural storytelling, and sustainable practice.
Before launching his eponymous brand in 2022, Charles launched an initial brand in 2013 which closed in 2015 and re-emerged in 2022 with Harbison Studio. Charles forged a prominent career in New York City, working as a textile and apparel designer for legacy houses including Michael Kors Collection, Luca Luca, and Billy Reid. His initial collections earned rapid critical acclaim, championed by Vogue, Elle, and The New York Times, leading to high-profile moments dressing cultural icons such as Beyoncé, Duchess Meghan Markle, and Ava DuVernay. Harbison has design-directed contemporary brands like Cult Gaia and Ungaro, collaborated with Banana Republic, and led design conversations at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Barnes Foundation.
Harbison was born in Lincolnton, North Carolina, where he developed an early passion for fashion watching the transformative power of clothing in his working-class mother's life. He went on to study Fine Arts, Painting, and Fiber Arts & Textile Science at North Carolina State University’s College of Design. Following graduation, he spent a year abroad studying Central Asian before completing postgraduate fashion studies at Parsons School of Design in New York City. This major exhibition at HMA marks a deeply personal homecoming project for the designer.
Exhibition Sponsors
TSH Charitable Trust
Arts Culture Catawba
Beaver Family Foundation
Corning Foundation
Benji Starnes Construction
Brenda & Dale Cline
Patterson Pope
Valdese Weavers
Hickory Community Relations Council
This project was supported by a grant from Arts Culture Catawba
Winton & Rosa Eugene
Hickory Museum of Art reopens with a season of exhibitions
that honor the past while looking to the future.
Follow The Golden Thread through your new museum.
September 6, 2026 - January 31, 2027
2nd Floor Generations Gallery
Opening Reception Honoring Exhibitions by
Winton & Rosa Eugene, Francis Simeni, and Jean Cauthen
Saturday, October 10 | 5 - 7 PM
Rosa & Winton Eugene, Exercise in Balance/Equal, 2005, coiled stoneware vessel, low relief, carved, etched, and stained mock mosaic with tile grout and soft sculptured silk figures
Self-taught artists Rosa and Winton Eugene operate out of Cowpens, South Carolina, collaborating on stoneware deeply rooted in Southern folk traditions. Winton throws the forms on a wheel and incises them with detailed scenes, while Rosa mixes the glazes, applies them with a 2-inch brush, and creates larger decorative pieces through coiling and hand building. Before the clay is completely dry (at the leather-hard stage), Winton draws designs in pencil and uses tools to carve or excise clay. This creates intricate low-relief art depicting daily Southern life, family, and heritage.
Francis Simeni: MANIFEST
Hickory Museum of Art reopens with a season of exhibitions
that honor the past while looking to the future.
Follow The Golden Thread through your new museum.
September 6, 2026 - January 31, 2027
1st Floor localHMA Gallery
Opening Reception Honoring Exhibitions by
Francis Simeni, Jean Cauthen, and Rosa & Winton Eugene
Saturday, October 10 | 5 - 7 PM
Francis Simeni, Bearer of Light, mixed media on collaged canvas
Francis Simeni is a painter living in Hickory, North Carolina. Born in Nigeria, the son of a diplomat, Francis split his childhood between Poland and Nigeria before settling in New York City for 36 years, and now Hickory. It is from this perspective that he creates compositions with intense personal narratives. His graphic compositions are infused with emotion from an earthy warm palette and grainy wood surface to a vibrant and full palette on torn up collaged pieces of paper. Using these natural and man-made surfaces as part of composition grounds each piece as it creates a narrative that focuses on a limited color palette sometimes, and a broader, more colorful palette at other times. He explores personal themes and how each person’s story relates to the broader human experience.
Jean Cauthen
Hickory Museum of Art reopens with a season of exhibitions
that honor the past while looking to the future.
Follow The Golden Thread through your new museum.
September 6, 2026 - January 31, 2027
1st Floor The Carolina Gallery
Opening Reception Honoring Exhibitions by
Jean Cauthen, Francis Simeni, and Rosa & Winton Eugene
Saturday, October 10 | 5 - 7 PM
Jean Cauthen, Tend
Jean Cauthen grew up in Naples, Italy, New Orleans and the Carolinas. She
completed her education with an MFA in Painting and Drawing at James Madison University in Virginia.
Much of her professional life was spent as head of the Art Department at Caldwell Community College and Technical Institute and as Professor of Art History (UNC-C).
Her art career has led her to Moscow, Russia as a set designer and she regularly returns to Italy, France and Ireland for month long artist residencies. When not working plein-air, she creates large scale paintings in her studio located in Dilworth Artisan Station in Charlotte, NC.
Inside the Studio: William and Steven Ladd
Hickory Museum of Art reopens with a season of exhibitions
that honor the past while looking to the future.
Follow The Golden Thread through your new museum.
September 6, 2026 - January 31, 2027
1st Floor Hole in the Wall Gallery
Prior to Hickory Museum of Art’s (HMA) renovation, this was a tiny bathroom in the shopHMA office affectionally dubbed the “Hobbit Bathroom” by our team.
The Ladd Brothers are the artists behind the National Scrollathon. They were in town last November to conduct our museum’s Scrollathon workshops and we gave them a behind-the-scenes tour during construction. William had a brilliant idea: what if instead of walling off the Hobbit Bathroom, we turn it into an installation space?
And just like that, Hole in the Wall gallery was born! Naturally, the Ladd Brothers were asked to create the inaugural installation for our Grand Reopening. Inside is a mini version of the Ladd Brother’s studio, complete with works in progress and finished pieces.
The National Scrollathon
Hickory Museum of Art reopens with a season of exhibitions
that honor the past while looking to the future.
Follow The Golden Thread through your new museum.
September 6, 2026 - January 31, 2027
1st Floor Hambrick Gallery
Hickory Museum of Art (HMA) represented the state of North Carolina in the National Scrollathon®, America's Cultural Project for the Semiquincentennial, celebrating the creativity, resilience, and connection that define the nation. The National Scrollathon® involved the participation of over 10,000 people from all 50 states and territories to create one single artwork, which was displayed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. from May 26 to June 29, 2026.
“Scrollathon believes in the creative capacity of every human being and the extraordinary power of community,” said artists Steven and William Ladd. “Through personal storytelling and shared creativity, we aim to honor the voices and experiences that shape communities across the country.”
All 200+ participants of our Scrollathon created an individual piece of scrolled fabric artwork that expressed their personal and unique story as well as a souvenir scroll to take with them as a keepsake. To capture each participant’s place in time and voice, photographic portraits and signatures of participants were captured. Videos of select participants sharing their stories became part of the larger exhibition and are featured in this exhibition and Scrollathon.com.
Hickory Museum of Art’s Scrollathon Sponsors:
Corning Foundation
Hambrick Family Foundation
Arts Culture Catawba
This project was supported by Arts Culture Catawba through the North Carolina Arts Council, a division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Hickory Museum of Art is proud to debut our project that was created during a series of workshops held in November 2025, led by Scrollathon founders, contemporary artists and brothers Steven and William Ladd. During the North Carolina Scrollathon, over 200 participants met over the course of two days at HMA’s satellite museum that was located in Valley Hills Mall while our main location was closed for renovation. Each individual created a textile scroll which was added to this Collaborative Masterwork.
About Scrollathon and the Artists
Founded by artists Steven and William Ladd in 2006, Scrollathon is a multimedia, community-based art initiative uniting participants from across the country through storytelling and textile-based collaborative art. American Storytellers, launched in partnership with the Kennedy Center, captured and amplified these stories that led up to America’s 250th anniversary in 2026.
Steven and William Ladd are New York-based brothers and artists originally from St. Louis, MO who are known for vibrant, highly textural artwork that evokes childhood memories, working at the intersection of design, applied, and fine art. William discovered beading at 15 and Steven began making clothes while studying at Rockhurst University in Kansas City. After moving to Brooklyn to collaborate, their formal artistic partnership began in 2000 while creating accessories that attracted interest from the Louvre’s Musée des Arts Décoratifs, which included their work in a major exhibition. Selected for the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt’s Design Triennial in 2006, the Ladds’ artworks began representing people, places, and memories of their shared childhood, an evolving theme throughout their practice.