CHARLESTON, SC.- The Gibbes Museum of Art presents two new exhibitions starting today July 22 through October 16, 2011. The Creative Spirit: Vernacular Art from the Gadsden Arts Center Permanent Collection, organized by the Gadsden Arts Center in Quincy, Florida, will be on view in the Main Gallery. The Creative Spirit features paintings, drawings, and sculpture by the foremost self-taught artists of the American South. In Search of Julien Hudson: Free Artist of Color in Pre–Civil War New Orleans is co-organized by Worcester Art Museum and The Historic New Orleans Collection. The exhibition, on view in the Gibbes’ Rotunda Galleries, is the first retrospective of the brief but important —career of portraitist Julien Hudson, one of the earliest-documented free artists of color working in the 19th century. “The complimentary nature of these two exhibitions underscores our desire to present new and inter