Henri-Michel-Antoine Chapu (French, 1833–91). A Bust of Alexandre Dumas, pere, after 1876, terracotta. The Smith-Naifeh Collection.

Take a European sojourn with Renaissance, Romanticism, and Rebellion

Renaissance, Romanticism, and Rebellion: European Art from the Smith-Naifeh Collection brings together more than 70 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, offering a sweeping look at the vibrant and transformative world of 19th-century European art. Drawn entirely from the renowned Smith-Naifeh Collection, carefully assembled over decades by South Carolina-based collectors and scholars Gregory Smith and Stephen Naifeh, the exhibition captures a century defined by dramatic cultural, social, and artistic shifts. Many of the works on view were created by pioneers of their time, influencing or working alongside legendary figures such as Vincent van Gogh (about whom Smith and Naifeh wrote a critically acclaimed biography). The exhibition also marks a rare chance to experience a major portion of this outstanding private collection. It is the most comprehensive public presentation of the Smith-Naifeh Collection to date. Organized into three thematic sections, the show invites visitors on a journey through the evolving styles and ideas that defined a century.

• Renaissance features artists whose work reflected classical ideals, embracing harmony, nature, and rigorous academic training, that met the high standards of Europe’s elite salons.

• Romanticism delves into the emotional heart of the era, showcasing dramatic stories and powerful landscapes that invite awe, empathy, and deep reflection.

• Rebellion highlights the rule-breakers — artists who defied tradition with daring subjects and bold techniques, setting the stage for the rise of modernism.

–Jonathan Stuhlman, PhD, is senior curator of American Art at The Mint Museum

Image courtesy of The Mint Museum

Skateboarding has always been more than a sport. Each deck tells a story of creativity, rebellion, and connection.

With over 9 million skateboarders in the United States, the sport is now ranked as the sixth fastest growing in the country by the Sports and Fitness Industry Association, and skateboarding continues to shape and reflect American culture in dynamic ways.

Central Impact: Skateboarding’s Art and Influence, on view September 19, 2025 through January 4, 2026 at Mint Museum Randolph takes a closer look at one of skateboarding’s most powerful forms of expression: the board itself. The exhibition brings together rare and iconic decks, original artwork, and archival media spanning from the 1970s to today. It highlights how skate graphics have evolved alongside cultural shifts and technological advancements, offering a visual timeline of the movement’s growth.

Featured in the show are works by influential artists, including Sean Cliver, Marc McKee, and Andy Jenkins. Their graphics helped define the look and attitude of skateboarding through decades of change. These pieces are displayed alongside selections from private collections, including contributions from Tim Anderson, Josh Frazier, Andrew Thomas, Patrick Lowery, and others who have dedicated themselves to preserving this rich visual history.

While the exhibition spans global and national narratives, it places special focus on the Southeast and North Carolina’s skateboarding community. From pro skaters to local pioneers, these individuals shaped the region’s skate culture through passion, grit, and imagination. Charlotte has built a scene known for its independent spirit. With spots like Central Avenue, Eastland, and Kilborne Park serving as cultural landmarks, the city’s skaters have long organized their own events, supported local artists, and built places to ride when none existed. Central Impact recognizes the moments and people that helped put Charlotte on the skateboarding map. It documents the local scene’s role in a much broader story, showing how a homemade ramp or a spray-painted deck can carry meaning far beyond the street it was built on.

The exhibition pairs seamlessly with Future Now: Virtual Sneakers to Cutting-Edge Kicks, also on view this fall at Mint Museum Randolph. Together, the two exhibitions explore how design, identity, and street culture continue to push boundaries—whether through footwear or four wheels. The exhibition is presented in partnership with Deckaid, a volunteer-led nonprofit that collaborates with artists, collectors, and skateboarders to showcase and create awareness of skateboard art history with an emphasis on supporting marginalized youth. Central Impact also serves a greater purpose. Proceeds from the exhibition will support the Charlotte Skate Foundation, which works to expand access and resources for young skaters across the region. This is more than a celebration of skateboarding graphics. It is a look into the culture, people, and places that continue to shape one of the most creative and inclusive communities in the world. Central Impact invites visitors to see skateboarding not just as a sport, but as a powerful form of self-expression with stories worth telling.

–Clayton Sealey is senior director of marketing and communications at The Mint Museum.

Jeff Staple x RTFKT
Meta-Pigeon K-Minus, 2021
Collection of the Bata Shoe Museum, gift of RTFKT
Image courtesy of RTFKT

The oldest works of art at Mint Museum Randolph may stretch back thousands of years — but this fall, the spotlight is on what’s next.

Future Now: Virtual Sneakers to Cutting-Edge Kicks explores the evolution of shoes — from 19th-century industrial breakthroughs to today’s boundary-pushing designs built for both the real world and the metaverse. Curated by Elizabeth Semmelhack, director and senior curator of the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, Future Now features approximately 60 revolutionary pairs of footwear, drawing from the Bata collection and private loans. Expect creations from icons like Salehe Bembury, RTFKT, Zaha Hadid, Mr. Bailey, Nike ISPA, SCRY, and more.

From factory floor to fashion frontier

During the 19th century, the traditional craft of shoemaking in the West was transformed by industrialization and the development of new synthetic materials. Early innovations gave rise to affordable, durable footwear — but they also limited consumer options for sizes and styles and led to the exploitation of workers and environmental waste. The designers represented in Future Now grapple with this complex history, prioritizing sustainability and style in equal measure. Although Future Now includes many kinds of footwear, the emphasis is on sneakers, highlighting the ways designers have met the performance and aesthetic needs of athletes and sneakerheads alike. The exhibition, organized into five sections, begins with an overview of new technologies and materials from the 19th and 20th centuries and includes some of the earliest sneakers, made in the 1890s, and evening shoes with celluloid heels from the 1920s.

Innovation unleashed

The “Innovation” section features 21st-century avant-garde styles like the NOVA platform shoe by the late Iraqi British architect Zaha Hadid. The cantilevered fiberglass platforms share the curvaceous lines and futuristic look of her building designs. The shoe is the first to use rotational molding to create its vinyl uppers and also includes vacuum-cast fiberglass platforms and heel wedges. It is made by United Nude, a company founded by Rem D. Koolhaas, who also studied architecture and believes that “shoes that don’t look like shoes can be the most exciting shoes.”

Projecting into the future

The shoe industry churns out over 20 billion pairs of shoes each year, contributing an estimated 2% of global carbon emissions. But visionary designers are combatting these problems through waste-free production methods and materials. In the “Sustainable” section of the exhibition, Designer Zixiong Wei and his company SCRY (the verb “scry” means to look into the future) created his otherworldly Undercurrent shoe in a fully digital process, from design to 3D printing, avoiding the material waste of offcuts in manufacturing. Footwear design today is more diverse — and more digital — than ever. In the “Transformative” section, view designs by creative disruptors like Daniel Bailey, aka Mr. Bailey. Bailey, founder of Conceptkicks, is a champion for the next generation, sharing the design process with emerging creators around the world through digital platforms. Mr. Bailey’s Octopus Shoe reinterprets the high-top sneaker through the lens of Japanese pop artist Takashi Murakami. Inspired by Murakami’s Dobtopus sculptures, a variation of his recurring animated character Mr. Dob, Mr. Bailey’s design thoroughly reimagines the form of a high-top sneaker with sucker-laden tentacles reaching up from around the sole and tongues featuring Mr. Dob’s Mickey Mouse-like, round ears and toothy open mouth.

Into the virtual realm

In a world where our identities live both online and off, the final section — “Virtual” — dives into the fascinating realm of digital fashion. Enter RTFKT (pronounced “artifact”). The trailblazing company founded by Benoit Pagotto, who previously worked in e-sports marketing; Chris Le, a game designer; and Steven Vasilev, a customizer of sneakers, fuses gaming, crypto, and culture, producing NFT sneakers with a real-world counterpart. Much like works of art or custom-made products, NFTs are unique digital assets. RTFKT created a new model where consumers who purchase sneaker NFTs are also entitled to a matching pair of physical sneakers made on demand. The consumer can then wear them as an avatar, a physical version in real life, or sell them for profit. New York streetwear legend Jeff Staple joined forces with RTFKT. Staple rose to fame in 2005 when he was commissioned by Nike to design a shoe that represented his home city. Staple took inspiration from the pigeon, a creature he sees as a “hustler” and a “warrior” that follows its own rules. He created the limited-edition Nike Dunk Low Pro SB Pigeon—aka the cult-classic Pigeon Dunk. With only 30 pairs made to sell, the drop caused a frenzy in lower Manhattan on release day February 22, 2005. When Staple saw RTFKT’s NFT sneakers, he sensed a similar cultural inflection point and approached them about collaborating. The result: a futuristic digital-physical hybrid known as the MetaPigeon and another instant sneaker icon.

–Rebecca Elliot is associate curator of craft, design, and fashion at The Mint Museum.

Drawing together nearly 100 works from the museum’s Modern & Contemporary Collection, Under Construction: Collage from The Mint Museum is the museum’s first exhibition to focus on this dynamic, engaging medium. This technique, in which materials from different sources are cut, torn, and layered to create new meanings and narratives, experienced a renaissance after World War II, due in large part to Charlotte native Romare Bearden, whose work plays a special role in this exhibition.

The exhibition will be open to Mint members only on Friday, November 30; it opens to the public on Saturday, December 1. A party celebrating the exhibition and featuring artists, lenders, donors, and Mint members is scheduled for January 31, 2019 – check mintmuseum.org/events for details.

Bearden has long had a special place at The Mint Museum, which maintains a gallery dedicated to his work at Mint Museum Uptown. In this special exhibition, he and his work serve as a point of departure to explore the medium for which he is best known.

“It was great fun pulling together Under Construction,” noted Dr. Jonathan Stuhlman, Senior Curator of American, Modern, and Contemporary Art. “This is the first time that the museum has examined this fascinating technique in depth in a special exhibition. It also was exciting to think about how the work of Romare Bearden (which is found throughout the exhibition) relates to that of so many other artists in the collection. Under Construction is filled with dynamic, thought-provoking objects that are sure to inspire and delight our visitors.”

Under Construction explores not only classic collages including those by Bearden, but also the wide range of ways in which the technique has inspired artists and impacted other forms of art, from painting and printmaking to photography and assemblage. Featuring more than 30 international artists, Under Construction will explore the growth and impact of the collage technique from the 1950s to the present. It will include more than a dozen works by Bearden, as well as examples by such notable artists as Sam Gilliam, Robert Motherwell, Tim Rollins and K.O.S., Shepard Fairey, Howardena Pindell, Robert Rauschenberg, and James Rosenquist.

Visitors will be able to discover how eight inventive contemporary artists have continued to mine the medium recent years in a section titled “New Directions.” Although drawn primarily from the rich holdings of The Mint Museum, this exhibition will also include special loans from private collections.

The exhibition is organized by The Mint Museum. Media partners are The Charlotte Observer, Pride Magazine, and Peachy.

Media and special guests are invited to preview the exhibition at 10 AM on Friday, November 30 at Mint Museum Uptown at Levine Center for the Arts, 500 South Tryon Street. Light refreshments will be served and interviews with the curator and select artists will be available. RSVP to leigh.dyer@mintmuseum.org.

African-Print Fashion Now! A Story of Taste, Globalization, and Style introduces audiences to the dynamic traditions of African dress featuring colorful, boldly patterned printed cloth. The exhibition, opening to the public at Mint Museum Randolph October 7 following two days of Mint member previews, highlights the interplay between regional preferences and cosmopolitanism that has long flourished on the continent, while highlighting the expansiveness of 21st-century African-print fashion.

The exhibition will be open to Mint members on Friday, October 5 from 11 AM-6 PM and Saturday October 6 from 1-6 PM, and will open to the public on Sunday, October 7 from 1-5 PM. Two fashion designers with work featured in the exhibition, Titi Ademola and Alexis Temomanin, will be in Charlotte from Thursday through Sunday and are available for media interviews. Sunday’s event includes a public talk with both designers from 2-3 PM, free after museum admission. Public opening day also includes a drumming performance and a light reception with cash bar. Ademola, a Ghanian/Nigerian designer, is founder of the KIKI label, while Temomanin is the British-Ivorian founder of menswear brand Dent de Man.

African-Print Fashion Now!, organized by the Fowler Museum at UCLA, expands the Mint’s presentations of contemporary fashion into a broader cultural arena, and continues the Mint’s emphasis on presenting exhibitions that represent diverse voices and backgrounds. “This exhibition aligns with our mission to explore the meaning of fashion in a global 21^st-century context,” said Annie Carlano, Senior Curator of Craft, Design, & Fashion at the Mint. “From the bold, dynamic cloth, to the inventive, sculptural silhouettes, the textiles and fashions in this exhibition have inspired and infiltrated Western fashion, art, music, and popular culture.”

“The Mint is honored to be one of three venues for this important exhibition, and very pleased to collaborate with the Fowler Museum, UCLA, for the first time,” said Dr. Todd Herman, PhD, President & CEO of the Mint. “Additionally, we are deeply grateful to Charlotte’s own Michael Gallis for his role in bringing this exhibition to our community.”

The works featured throughout the exhibition demonstrate the vital role that African-print has played in the expression of beauty, fashion, and heritage, while creating transcultural connections across Africa and into the larger world.

The exhibition is complemented by an interactive design studio created by the Mint’s Learning & Engagement team, offering visitors of all ages opportunities to design their own prints, experience African-print fabrics, and go on a scavenger hunt through the exhibition.

Four sections weaving multiple themes

The exhibition is organized into four sections: “It All Starts with Cloth,” “Portraits in Print,” “Regional Styles, Fashion Preferences,” and “New Directions.” Collectively, the installation includes dozens of tailored fashions, nearly 100 archival and contemporary cloths, approximately 20 black-and-white studio portrait photographs from the 1960s and 1970s, a series of runway videos, and several works by contemporary visual artists. Ensembles on view draw from the Fowler’s collections, private loans, and the extensive archives of the Dutch textile manufacturing company Vlisco.

Several themes weave their way throughout the exhibition, mimicking the cyclical nature of fashion trends and the ripple effects of politics and technology on the formation of identity. One theme is consumer agency, both in determining designs and patterns through purchasing power and by commissioning unique ensembles from seamstresses and tailors. Another theme is the theatrical power of fashion, and its ability to express individualism or collective solidarity, whether in a family portrait or Women’s Day Marches in communities across the continent. Finally, a link between imaging and fashion surfaces in each section of the exhibition. From formal portraiture to visual arts to ubiquitous African fashion calendars to street style photos shared by cell-phone, it is clear that representations of fashion have always been a nuanced form of communication.

Fashion subtly communicates about place, heritage, and belonging through such means as appropriation, pastiche, and revival. Throughout the exhibition, African-print fashions are considered to be creative responses to key historical moments and empowering projections about Africa’s future.

About the Exhibition

“It All Starts with Cloth” addresses the history of African-print textiles, originally inspired by batik or wax-resist cloth from Indonesia. A dense grid of more than 60 cloths manufactured in Europe, Africa, and Asia evokes the vibrating colors and designs stocked in open-air markets and cloth shops across the African continent. A visual timeline of production across these regions outlines the history of the cloth trade in West and Central Africa from the 1800s to the present. Archival photographs and dramatic film footage of the Vlisco factory in operation transport audiences to the production of cloth in the Netherlands.

“Portraits in Print” leaves behind the brightly colored world of African-print fashion and enters an intimate black-and-white space of memory. A gallery introduces four photographers from Africa’s “golden age” of black-and-white photography in the 1960s and 1970s: Francis K. Honny (Ghana, 1914–1998); Jacques Toussele (Cameroon, 1935–2017); Omar Ly (Senegal, 1943–2016); and Mory Bamba (b. Mali, 1949). Their photography studios in newly independent West African countries provided a platform for an ascending middle class to see themselves and be seen by one another. The portraits are indicative of a historical moment when local African-print ensemble styles gained new significance as expressions of national and Pan-African pride and identity.

“Regional Styles, Fashion Preferences” takes an in-depth look at localized contemporary African-print fashion whereby stylish dress is a feature of daily life. Ensembles on view from Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, and Senegal reflect an array of styles, all of them customized and individually made to order. This section presents a case study from Kumasi, Ghana to illustrate the interactive commissioning process between seamstresses or tailors and their fashion-conscious clientele. The bold patterns of the cloth engineered with subtle and striking variations in style reveal the ingenuity and flair of regional designers.

“New Directions” bridges regional cultures with transnational art and fashion networks, beginning with African-print styles on global runways in Paris, New York, Dakar, and other cities. Designers in this section include Titi Ademola (b. London, based in Ghana), Ituen Bassey (b. Nigeria), Afua Dabanka (b. Germany, based in Ghana), Lisa Folawiyo (b. Nigeria), Adama Amanda Ndiaye (b. Democratic Republic of the Congo, based in Senegal), Alexis Temomanin (b. Côte d’Ivoire), Gilles Touré (b. Côte d’Ivoire), and Patricia Waota (b. Côte d’Ivoire). Ensembles on view feature full-length gowns and men’s blazers, metallic wax print, and architectural pleating and boning—all of which harmoniously marry the drape of the fabric with the strategic construction of print patterns for stunning results.

Juxtaposed with these glamorous designs are contemporary works by photographers and other visual artists who incorporate print-cloth imagery to convey evocative messages about heritage, hybridity, displacement, and aspiration.

Members of the media and invited special guests are invited to preview the exhibition from 5:30-7 PM on Thursday October 4 at Mint Museum Randolph, 2730 Randolph Road in Charlotte. Light refreshments, wine, and beer will be served. RSVP to Leigh.Dyer@mintmuseum.org.

Publication

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated volume generously funded by the R. L. Shep Endowment Fund at the Fowler Museum. The publication includes essays authored by exhibition co-curators Suzanne Gott, Kristyne S. Loughran, Betsy D. Quick, and Leslie W. Rabine with additional essays contributed by Kathleen Bickford Berzock, Boatema Boateng, M. Amah Edoh, Helen Elands, Anne Grosfilley, Karen Tranberg-Hansen, Helen Jennings, Sandra Klopper, Stephan F. Miescher, Hansi Momodu-Gordon, John Picton, Elisha P. Renne, Victoria L. Rovine, Ken Aïcha Sy, and Nina Sylvanus. It is on sale for $40 in both locations of the Mint Museum stores.

Credit

African-Print Fashion Now! A Story of Taste, Globalization, and Style is organized by the Fowler Museum at UCLA in association with Vlisco Netherlands B.V. It is guest curated by Suzanne Gott with Kristyne S. Loughran, Betsy D. Quick, and Leslie W. Rabine. In Charlotte, Annie Carlano, Senior Curator of Craft, Design, & Fashion, is the project curator. Major funding is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts with the additional support of R. L. Shep, DutchCulture, and Pasadena Art Alliance.

The exhibition is presented in Charlotte by PNC Financial Services with generous additional support from the Mint Museum Auxiliary, Wells Fargo Private Bank, and Moore & Van Allen.

ABOUT THE FOWLER MUSEUM

The Fowler Museum at UCLA explores global arts and cultures with an emphasis on works from Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and the Americas—past and present. The Fowler enhances understanding of world cultures through dynamic exhibitions, publications, and public programs, informed by interdisciplinary approaches and the perspectives of the cultures represented. Also featured is the work of international contemporary artists presented within the complex frameworks of politics, culture, and social action.

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