August 5, 2020 | Megan Sexton
Born into a Columbia family steeped in social justice, Robin Waites left her hometown for college, earning an undergraduate degree in art history and Russian from Middlebury College in Vermont, but she returned to the University of South Carolina to pursue a master’s degree in art history.
“I wanted to do something that could impact community in some positive ways. I ended up going the art history route because that was a way I felt I could do something at some level that was important, but still cultivate something that I really love, which is the arts,” Waites says.
“The way that I come to the arts is with a social lens. I love to look at work and figure out what the artist was doing, why they painted it, what was going on in the world at the time and how it’s a commentary on life.”
After earning her master’s in 1996, she worked in a variety of jobs at the S.C. State Museum, eventually becoming the chief curator of art. In 2002, she moved to Historic Columbia, and in 2004 she became executive director of the nonprofit dedicated to preserving Columbia and Richland County’s historic and cultural heritage.
We’re helping people find ways to establish a sense of place for themselves, and to find that through different mediums and different ways.
Robin Waites, executive director, Historic Columbia
She’s made her mark by rethinking the way the city looks at its history, renovating and transforming the organization’s house museums and grounds, creating partnerships with a wide spectrum of communities and advocating for preservation of historic structures.
In December, she was honored by One Columbia for Arts and Culture, the city’s arts advocacy organization, with its Stephen G. Morrison Visionary Award. The award is given to a Columbian who reflects the values and qualities of the late Morrison, an attorney, arts patron and former One Columbia board chairman. Waites was specifically honored for accomplishments including the renovations at the Mann-Simons site, the Woodrow Wilson Family Home and the Hampton Preston mansion and gardens.