Historian Dr. Dale Rosengarten will present a lecture titled "Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art"on Saturday, January 17, 2009 at The Strand Theater during the Winyah Bay Heritage Festival. Dr. Rosengarten remarks will follow the subject of a traveling exhibition that she is co-curating for the Museum for African Art, which will be at the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston from August 29 to November 30, 2008. Also as part of the traveling exhibit, SC ETV will air a documentary film "Grass Roots: The Enduring Art of the Lowcountry Basket" on September 18, 2008 at 10:00pm.

Dr. Rosengarten is the author of Row upon Row: Sea Grass Baskets of the South Carolina Lowcountry (McKissick Museum, University of South Carolina, 1986), she has written extensively on the art of coiled grass basketry, its African roots, and its long evolution on the South Atlantic coast.

A student of Jewish culture and history in the American South, Rosengarten curated McKissick Museum’s “A Portion of the People: Three Hundred Years of Southern Jewish Life,” and co-edited, with her husband, Theodore, a book by the same name (University of South Carolina Press, 2002). Since 1995 she has served as director of the Jewish Heritage Collection at the College of Charleston.

Dr. Rosengarten received her Ph.D. from Harvard University. She is married to Theodore Rosengarten, a fellow historian and author. The Rosengartens moved to McClellanville, SC, in 1976. Their sons, Rafael and Carlin, are Lowcountry natives, though their parents still sound like they came from New York.

A limited number of tickets are available for the lecture, which can be purchased at Schofield Hardware in Georgetown.