The Georgia Museum of Art welcomed Doug Hollingsworth to its staff in April as an art handler with an educational focus in the design and preparation department. This new position primarily focuses on retrieving works from the museum’s permanent collection for faculty, students, researchers and members of the public to examine upon request in the Shannon and Peter Candler Collection Study Room. He usually brings out art to be observed for a single day, unlike works in an exhibition, which are displayed for a longer period, but he’ll also be installing the museum’s study gallery once a semester.
Hollingsworth first lived in Athens during the heyday of its music scene when bands like Pylon and R.E.M. were on the rise. After receiving his bachelor’s degree from the University of Georgia in 1977, he moved to Virginia to work on two different archaeology projects before returning to Athens a few years later to study in UGA’s Master of Landscape Architecture program. Throughout the ‘90s, he worked at Flagpole magazine and the 40 Watt Club and played with singer-songwriter Vic Chesnutt and alt-country act The Star Room Boys.
Although Hollingsworth’s academic background is in zoology, environmental design and landscape architecture, he “sort of fell into” museum work when he went to New York to work as a temp on an installation at the Guggenheim Museum and ended up staying for 13 years. He has since accumulated many years of experience in fabrication at the Guggenheim and the Museum of Modern Art.
Hollingsworth’s work at the Guggenheim often involved building large structures that supplemented exhibitions and accentuated the museum’s spiraling structure. “We made everything like all the pedestals, all the platforms, all the display cases, and then any other insane stuff that they needed because they always wanted insane things hanging from the ceiling or rivers that people could ride boats down,” Hollingsworth said. “It was crazy because the building’s round and spiraled – nothing’s level, nothing’s square, nothing’s plumb.”
In contrast, Hollingsworth primarily worked on making rectangular frames in the frame shop at the Museum of Modern Art. “It was all right angles. There were none at the Guggenheim, and then I went on to do nothing but right angles.”
He eventually decided to return to Athens because he wanted more time to pursue his artistic and literary endeavors. Hollingsworth is the author of two novels, “The Work” and “Frankenstein’s Paradox,” that he reluctantly describes as Southern Gothic. These two novels are a part of a loosely related trilogy, and he is currently working on the third installment. The books are written in a reverse chronology – “You’re sort of going backwards in time and things are revealed in a reverse manner as you go,” he said.
Additionally, Hollingsworth continues to dabble in music and visual art during his free time. His first novel is illustrated with his eerie ink drawings that resemble woodcut prints.
Hollingsworth’s work will provide invaluable assistance to the Georgia Museum of Art’s expanding educational initiatives that aim to make art more accessible to a broader audience. Though he is “technically retired,” he looks forward to working at the museum because it offers him the flexibility to work on his passion projects while enjoying a city where he made unforgettable memories.
Authored by:
Nabiha Rahman
