“Art with a Conscience: The social comment works of Ellen Zisholtz” will be held Friday, October 10, at 6 p.m. at the York W. Bailey Museum at historic Penn Center on St. Helena Island.

Ellen Zisholtz, director and curator with I.P. Stanback Museum and Planetarium, is Assistant Professor at SC State University, an HBCU. Her recognitions include the Board for the Association of African American Museums; Governor’s Award for the Humanities; Alliance of Ethics and Art Unsung Hero of Civil Rights; and the Orangeburg Chapter of the Links community service in the arts award. Congressman James Clyburn presented her with the Award for Creativity at SC State. She was on the DC Host Committee for the dedication of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial and the planning committee for the 50th Anniversary of Freedom Summer.

Exhibitions include Art with a Conscience, York W. Bailey Museum, Penn Center, 2014; Transcending Slavery and the Holocaust, Temple University Hillel; shows in NYC in SOHO, 2008, and the New York State Exhibition at the Avante Gallery.

She studied at the Arts Students League, received her MA at NYU; her BA at City University of NY and served on the faculties of Rutgers and NYU.

This exhibition is a part of Penn Centers 150th Anniversary Celebration. For more than 150 years, Penn Center, Inc., located on St. Helena Island, SC, has been at the epicenter of African American education, historic preservation and social justice for tens of thousands of descendants of formerly enslaved West Africans living in the Sea Islands, known as the Gullah Geechee people.  The Gullah people have continued to survive to today and represent the most tangible living example of one of the outcomes of the Port Royal Experiment, a plan by the federal government to “test the capabilities of the Negro for freedom and self-support” during the Civil War.