When Alfred Heber Holbrook founded the Georgia Museum of Art in 1948, he had one main goal: make art more available to the people. For 75 years, free entry into the museum has endured as a means to help foster this goal. Over the course of the museum’s history, the number of visitors each year has continued to grow and today, without the barrier of admission fees, the museum sees upwards of 60,000 visitors annually.
As we celebrate the 75th anniversary of the museum this year, this marker in time is a chance to reflect on its history. To that end, “It Goes to the People: 75 Years of Free Inspiration at the Georgia Museum of Art,” an exhibition currently on display at the Richard B. Russell Special Collections Libraries, offers visitors a chance to do just that. Exhibition visitors are guided through a timeline of museum history that features archive photos and historical artifacts that illustrate the museum’s continued commitment to enrich UGA, Athens and the state through access to art.
The exhibition’s displays detail the early history of the art on campus, well before the museum was founded, and then walks visitors through the history and events that resulted in the establishment of the museum that stands today on East Campus. There are several stunning archive photographs on display from the late 19th century that show an art gallery at UGA that mainly featured portraits of “prominent” white males, many of whom were slave owners, the exhibition notes. These works were on display in what we now know as the Holmes-Hunter Academic Building and show just how different the art on display on campus was at that time. As pictured in a photograph titled “University of Georgia – Library and Museum” from the late 1800s, the University Art Gallery works are in the stark contrast to the works on display after the museum was founded in 1948. Instead of works of “important personalities,” campus art on view shifted and began to showcase the “power of visual art.”
The exhibition also pays homage to the man who made it all possible in the first place: museum founder Alfred Heber Holbrook. After he retired from a career in law in New York City, Holbrook decided to realize his dream of founding an art museum, using his impressive personal art collection, which he and his recently deceased wife Eva had curated together, as the foundation for a permanent collection. Today, Holbrook’s initial collection of 100 American paintings has flourished into a permanent collection of more than 17,000 works that are both protected and preserved on-site.
Holbrook was adamant about his mission to foster access and exposure to art. During the first years of his 21-year tenure as museum director, he dedicated himself to touring the state and reaching out to visit with civic groups, churches, schools and the like, to show off the works from his collection that he’d toted with him in the trunk of his car. Often, people in those groups had never had the opportunity to see works of art by prominent artists up close and in person.
Holbrook’s initial path to founding the museum at UGA began after a conversation with Holger Cahill, the director of the Federal Art Project under President Franklin Roosevelt, who suggested he consider the University of Georgia campus as a potential home for his collection. Holbrook had one visit to Athens, where he met UGA art school director, namesake and artist Lamar Dodd, and he fell in love with the community. As a lover of art, he was drawn to UGA in part because of his own passion for creating art and the art classes on campus. Upon moving to Athens, Holbrook immediately enrolled in art classes at UGA, where he was known to don a pink smock and smoke a pipe in class. On display at the Special Collections Libraries exhibition is Holbrook’s paintbox that he brought with him to class, an item that shows viewers his enthusiasm and passion not only for the display of art, but also its creation.
If you have an appreciation for the creative community and art culture in Athens, on campus and around the state, this exhibition is worthy of an in-person visit, as visitors have the chance to see historical artifacts first-hand and archive photos that help detail the lengthy history of the museum’s endeavors and enduring commitment to providing free inspiration for the last 75 years.
“It Goes to the People: 75 Years of Free Inspiration at the Georgia Museum of Art,” is on view in the rotunda of the Richard B. Russell Building Special Collections Libraries through August 26. Located at 300 South Hull Street, the Special Collections Libraries are open to visitors from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday, Wednesday and Friday and 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday. For more information about the exhibition, visit: https://libraries.uga.edu/hargrett/exhibits/GMOA-rotunda. For more details about the museum and events celebrating the museum’s 75th anniversary, visit georgiamuseum.org.
Authored by:
Regan Saunders
