Image by MOJA Arts Festival

Charleston’s 28th annual MOJA Arts Festival: A Celebration of African-American and Caribbean Arts is almost upon us.

The 2011 festival promises an exciting line-up of events with a rich variety of traditional favorites. The upcoming festival is scheduled for Thursday, September 29th through Sunday, October 9th.

You can take a look at the complete schedule of events here, which includes a quick description of each exhibition, dates, times and ticket prices.

Despite shining a light on a unique and underrepresented segment of Charleston's art scene, there have been not-so-pleasant reactions and feelings toward the festival from the local African American arts community. Local artist Joy Vandervort-Cobb has penned a piece for the Charleston City Paper in which the general consensus from her peers is, "This ain't my festival."

A similiar piece was written in 2010 by Anthropologist Ade Ofunniyin which paints a picture of a festival that was intended to be separate from the city but is now run by Charleston, and one that is too expensive for many artists in the black community to present in or attend.