Florence only state site for national exhibit

FLORENCE — Florence has been selected as the only site in South Carolina for a national exhibit called “The American Soldier, A Photographic Tribute.”

The exhibit will be at Florence Civic Center next year to tie in with Veterans Day, and it will continue for three months.

The show consists of 116 photographs from the Civil War to the war in Iraq assembled by Cyma Rubin, an Emmy and Tony Award-winning producer, director and writer.

The exhibit is described as “a dramatic exhibition of photographs that captures the essence of American soldiering over more than 150 years, ever since the birth of photography when the camera became a notebook to history, starting with the Civil War,” according to a press release. “.... The 116 enlarged photographs in this exhibition (cover) America at war from the Civil War, Spanish American War, Boxer Rebellion, World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War, Afghanistan, and to the streets of Baghdad. The exhibition captures the danger and the frustration, the humor and the beauty, the camaraderie, the death and the victory that the American soldier encountered in his odyssey through history and continues to, as he battles today in the mountains of Afghanistan and the urban environs of Iraq.”

In an interview with the Morning News earlier this week, Rubin said she was first approached about bringing the show to Florence by Barry Wingard, a Florence resident and retired U.S. Army colonel who read a story about the exhibit in a military magazine.

Wingard put Rubin in touch with Kendall Wall, general manager of the civic center. After coming to Florence to see the center and the new Veterans Memorial Park, she decided to bring the show to Florence.

Rubin said she tries to bring the show to venues where it wouldn’t normally be seen, and it is shown only once in each state.

The exhibit first opened in July 2007 in Hot Springs, Ark., where during its three-month run it attracted 132,000 people.

Next, it was shown in Raleigh, N.C., where it drew 500,000 people.

The show will be in Florence from Nov. 10, 2009, through Feb. 10, 2010.

Rubin and Wall said the exhibit will be located on the concourse where the Florence Athletic Hall of Fame is now. The hall of fame exhibit will be moved temporarily, and the space on the concourse will be made to look like a museum gallery.

Judging by other places where the exhibit has been shown, Wall said, Florence could expect more than 300,000 people to see it.

The show will be free, but Wall said he hopes to attract sponsorships and grant money. If money is left over, he said, it will go to the Veterans Park.

The hope is to attract people not only to the exhibit, but also to the park, the Columns battle site and Florence National Cemetery, said Holly Young, director of the Florence Convention and Visitors Bureau, in a press release.

The exhibit is sponsored by EADS North America, the second largest aerospace and defense company in the world.