As the fall semester gets under way, campus is bustling and lively again, but the summer heat is still here for a while. If you’re new to campus or returning, exploring the exhibitions at the Georgia Museum of Art is not only a great way to get out of the heat for a few hours, it’s easy on the wallet. Just register for your free tickets online or register when you arrive. Beyond exhibitions, the museum also offers a variety of programming–lectures, family events, yoga in the galleries and more–that’ll enrich your time on campus. Check out details on our current exhibitions and events below.
Current Exhibitions:
Where Shadows Cross: Photography by Jim Fiscus
Saturday, Jul 22, 2023 — Sunday, Oct 08, 2023
Iconic image maker Jim Fiscus produces layered single-frame stories that comment on human experience. The exhibition “Where Shadows Cross” grew out of a new project he began in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. It will include a dozen large-scale color photographs. Fiscus attempts to “tell it all” visually through lighting, shadow and composition. He entices viewers to immerse themselves in his stage sets, move through them and appreciate every crisp detail. Fiscus investigates seemingly mundane situations, focusing on figures doing unpredictable or unconventional things. Their interactions among each other or with their setting often upend our perspective and generates uncertainty about the evolving stories these images show.
In Dialogue–Power Couple: Pierre and Louise Daura in Paris
June 24, 2023 – February 11, 2024
In 1928, Pierre Daura and Louise Heron Blair married in Paris. Their social sphere included artists, writers, musicians, gallery owners and critics. Among their entourage was Uruguayan artist Joaquín Torres-García (1874 – 1949), whom Pierre had befriended and helped settle in Paris in 1926. The Torres and Daura families lived in the same apartment complex in the famed Montmartre district known for its vibrant artistic life full of studios, salons and cafés. During this period, Louise painted several portraits of Torres-García’s daughters, Olimpia and Ifigenia, while Pierre produced several engravings of the young girls, a testament to the families’ friendship and affection.
“In Dialogue” is a series of installations in which the Georgia Museum of Art’s curators create focused, innovative conversations around works of art from the permanent collection. The series brings these familiar works to life by placing them in dialogue with objects by influential peers, related sketches and studies or even objects from other periods.
June 17 – December 10, 2023
“Southern/Modern” is the first project to comprehensively survey the rich array of paintings and works on paper created in the American South during the first half of the 20th century. Featuring more than 100 works of art drawn from public and private collections across the country, it will bring together a generation’s worth of scholarship. The exhibition will take a broad view of the South, considering artists who worked in states below the Mason-Dixon line and as far west as those bordering the Mississippi River. It will be structured around key themes that cut across state lines and will take an inclusive view of the artists working in the region. It will also include a number of major artists from outside the region who produced significant bodies of work while visiting. “Southern/Modern” will provide the fullest, richest and most accurate overview to date of the artistic activity in the South during this period and illuminate the important and hitherto overlooked role that it played in American art history.
February 11-September 24, 2023
In this video work, images of friends and landscapes are cut, fragmented and reassembled on an overhead projector as hands guide their shape and construction. The voice tells a story about a not too distant past, a not too distant ruin, with traces of nostalgia expressed in terms of lore. We see knowledge and memory passed down and shared not from wistful loss, but as a collage of rumination, reproduction and creation.Sky Hopinka is a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation and a descendant of the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians. A filmmaker, video artist and photographer, Hopinka has received numerous honors for his innovative approach to cinema, including a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2021 Forge Project Fellowship and a 2022 MacArthur Fellowship. Hopinka layers imagery, sound and text to center personal perceptions of Native homelands as well as correlations between language and culture in relation to home and land. Hopinka has said, “Deconstructing language [through cinema] is a way for me to be free from the dogma of traditional storytelling and then, from there, to explore or propose more of what Indigenous cinema has the possibility to look like.”
Decade of Tradition: Highlights from the Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Collection
June 11, 2022 – July 3, 2024
In 2012, Larry and Brenda Thompson gave 100 works of art by African American artists to the Georgia Museum of Art, mirroring the original donation of 100 American paintings by museum founder Alfred Heber Holbrook. In addition, they endowed a curatorial position to steward this collection to help fulfill the museum’s vision of an inclusive canon of American art. This exhibition includes works from the 2011 traveling exhibition “Tradition Redefined,” which preceded the gift, as well as subsequent works added in recent years that have not been on view in other galleries. These works celebrate the expansion of the museum’s permanent collection through this transformative gift of works by African American artists.
Power and Piety in 17th-Century Spanish ArtNovember 14, 2020 – February 11, 2024
This exhibition is part of a continued collaboration between the Georgia Museum of Art and Bob Jones University Museum and Gallery in Greenville, South Carolina, and provides visitors with the opportunity to see works by premiere Spanish baroque painters such as Francisco de Zurbarán, Bartolomé Murillo, Pedro Orrente and others. Viewers will be immersed in a selection of paintings that uphold the tenets of Catholic Counter-Reformation Art illustrative of the struggle between the Catholic church and the rise of the Protestant Reformation in Europe, which dominated the art scene in 17th-century Spain.Upcoming events:
Thursday, Aug 17 • 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm
Join us for a free yoga class surrounded by works of art in the galleries. Led by instructors from Five Points Yoga, this program is free and open to both beginner and experienced yogis. Sanitized mats are provided. Space is limited and spots are available on a first-come, first-served basis; tickets are available at the front desk starting at 5:15 p.m.
Thursday, Aug 17 • 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Athens’ established venues for visual art hold Third Thursday, an event devoted to art in the evening hours, on the third Thursday of every month from 6 until 9 p.m. to showcase their visual-arts programming. Full schedules and participants are posted at 3Thurs.org.
Saturday, Aug 19 • 10:00 am – 12:00 pm
Family Day: Power Couple: Pierre and Louise
Artists and married couple Pierre and Louise Daura shared the same apartment complex with fellow artist Joaquín Torres-García and his family. This Family Day focuses on an exhibition about the families’ friendship and affection. Celebrate friendship, play Art Cart games in the galleries and then make art to take home in the Michael and Mary Erlanger Studio Classroom.
Sunday, Aug 20 • 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm
These drop-in public tours feature highlights of the permanent collection and are led by museum docents.
Tuesday, Aug 22 • 10:00 am – 11:00 am
Enjoy looking at art and storytime together in the galleries, then complete an art activity just for the little ones. This free program is designed for families with children ages 18 months to 3 years. Seats are limited; email gmoa-tours@uga.edu to reserve a spot.
Wednesday, Aug 23 • 2:00 pm – 2:30 pm
Artful Conversation: Lamar Dodd
Artful Conversation programs are 30 minutes long, focus on one or a few works of art and provide opportunities for close looking, open-ended dialogue and discovery. This one focuses on Lamar Dodd’s painting “Bargain Basement,” on view in the exhibition “Southern/Modern,” with Callan Steinmann, curator of education.
Friday, Aug 25 • 9:30 am – 10:30 am
Come rest and recharge in the galleries surrounded by inspiring art. Experienced mindfulness instructors lead guided meditations, gentle movements and slow-looking techniques. This program is free, stools are provided and no experience or special attire is needed. For more information or to reserve a seat, email gmoa-tours@uga.edu.
Saturday, Aug 26 • 10:00 am – 2:00 pm
Friends Annual Meeting and Friends Appreciation Month Kick-Off
Join the Friends Annual Meeting at 10 a.m., featuring the presentation of the annual M. Smith Griffith Volunteer of the Year Award, the 2023 – 24 Friends Board of Directors and an opportunity to meet our new director, David Odo. Following the annual meeting Friends are encouraged to drop in between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. as we show our appreciation with door prizes, art activities for the entire family, special shop discount, refreshments, treats and much more! The event is free for all Friends. Advance registration is strongly recommended at bit.ly/friends-appreciation-23. Don’t delay!
Saturday, Aug 26 • 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm
Celebrating 75 years with historic athens
Join Hope Iglehart and Historic Athens to celebrate our 75th anniversary. In the M. Smith Griffith Auditorium, they will present a captivating program that delves into the museum’s rich history through an original lecture, vintage photographs and compelling narratives. The program will also include special guest lectures from individuals who were a key part of the museum’s past. Be a part of this momentous occasion as we honor the legacy of the Georgia Museum of Art and its significant contributions to the cultural landscape of Athens. Come early for the Friends Appreciation Month Kick-Off and enjoy both.
Wednesday, Aug 30 • 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm
Tour at Two
These drop-in public tours feature highlights of the permanent collection and are led by museum docents.
Want to keep up with new exhibitions, lectures and more? Sign up for our weekly email newsletter, follow us on Instagram @georgiamuseum and become a Friend of the Museum to receive Facet, our quarterly print newsletter. You can also find an issue at the museum and at other campus locations. The outside wrap of the publication features our calendar of events and is designed to tear off so you can post it on your fridge or bulletin board.
Authored by:
Jessica Luton
