Around Atlanta

High Museum is Exclusive Southeast Venue for Dawoud Bey Photography Retrospective

Published

4 years ago

October 27, 2020

Peachtree Corners Magazine staff

A Man in a Bowler Hat, Harlem, NY, 1976- Dawoud Bey

For more than four decades, renowned photographer Dawoud Bey has created powerful and tender photographs that portray underrepresented communities and explore African American history. From portraits in Harlem and classic street photography to nocturnal landscapes and large-scale studio portraits, his works combine an ethical imperative with an unparalleled mastery of his medium. Coming this fall, the High Museum of Art will celebrate his important contributions to photography as the exclusive Southeast venue for “Dawoud Bey: An American Project” (Dec. 12, 2020-March 14, 2021), the artist’s first full career retrospective in 25 years.

Co-organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the exhibition will feature approximately 80 works that span the breadth of Bey’s career, from his earliest street portraits made in Harlem in the 1970s to his most recent series reimagining sites of the Underground Railroad (2017).

The High has enjoyed a long and fruitful relationship with Bey, who was commissioned in 1996 for the Museum’s inaugural “Picturing the South” series, which asks noted photographers to turn their lens toward the American South. For his project, Bey collaborated with Atlanta high school students to create empathetic, larger-than-life portraits. Made with the monumental 20-by-24-inch Polaroid camera, these photographs explore the complexity of adolescence as a time of critical identity formation and expand the concept of portraiture. The High now holds more than 50 photographs by Bey, one of the most significant museum collections of his work.

“Bey’s portraits are remarkable for their keen sensitivity and for how they elicit and honor their subjects’ sense of self, which is partly an outcome of the artist’s collaborative practice,” remarked Sarah Kennel, the High’s Donald and Marilyn Keough Family curator of photography. “Given the museum’s long relationship with Bey and the strength of our holdings, we are thrilled to present this important retrospective. We look forward to sharing the artist’s photographs and his powerful and moving reflections on African American history and identity in their country with our visitors.”

Bey, born in 1953 in Queens, New York, began to develop an interest in photography as a teenager. He received his first camera as a gift from his godmother in 1968, and the next year, he saw the exhibition “Harlem on My Mind” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Widely criticized for its failure to include significant numbers of artworks by African Americans, the exhibition’s representation of Black subjects nonetheless made an impression on Bey and inspired him to develop his own documentary project about Harlem in 1975. Since that time, he has worked primarily in portraiture, making tender, psychologically rich and direct portrayals, often in collaboration with his subjects. More recently, he has explored seminal moments in African American history through both portraiture and landscape.

“Dawoud Bey: An American Project” will include work from the artist’s eight major series and is organized to reflect the development of Bey’s vision throughout his career and to highlight his enduring engagement with portraiture, place and history.

The Street

Bey’s landmark black-and-white 1975-78 series “Harlem, USA” documents portraits and street scenes with locals of the historic neighborhood in New York. As a young man growing up in Queens, Bey was intrigued by his family’s history in Harlem, where his parents met and where he visited family and friends throughout childhood. The series premiered at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1979, when Bey was just 26.

In addition to works from that series, the exhibition will include a remarkable series of street photographs Bey made in Syracuse, New York, that demonstrate his keen eye for portraiture and his ability to respond with both spontaneity and sensitivity to his subjects and their environment. These works are accompanied by more formal street portraits that Bey created in the 1980s in areas such as Brooklyn, New York, and Washington, D.C. Made with a large-format camera and Polaroid film, these photographs reflect a more intimate and enduring exchange between Bey and his subjects, and by extension, the viewer.

The exhibition will also feature the series “Harlem Redux,” which marks Bey’s return to the area from 2014 to 2017. This newer series of large-format color landscapes and streetscapes at once documents and mourns the transformation of the community as it has become more gentrified and its original residents increasingly displaced.

The Studio

After honing his skills in street photography, Bey moved toward studio work in the 1990s, using a massive 20-by-24-inch Polaroid camera to make a series of sensitive and direct color portraits, first of friends and later of teenagers he met through a 1992 residency at the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Massachusetts. At the time, Bey also began to experiment with beautifully lit multipanel Polaroid portraits that challenge the singularity of the photographic print and suggest the complexity of identity.

In 2002, a residency at the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art inspired Bey to begin the series “Class Pictures.” Using a view camera to create striking, large-scale color portraits of high school students, Bey asked the students to write narratives to accompany the photographs. Over the next four years, Bey continued work on the series at high schools across the United States. By focusing on teenagers from a wide range of economic, social and ethnic backgrounds and giving them an opportunity to reveal their thoughts, fears and dreams at a critical moment of identity formation, Bey created a diverse group of thoughtful and introspective portraits that challenge stereotypes of adolescence.

History

The exhibition closes with works from two of Bey’s most recent series exploring African American history and collective memory.

“The Birmingham Project,” created in 2012 as a commission from the Birmingham Museum of Art, memorializes the victims of the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, and its violent aftermath. The series features expressive portraits of children who are the same age as the bombing victims paired with photographs of adults who are the ages those children would have been in 2012 had they lived. The photographs, along with an accompanying video piece, are stirring reminders of the precious lives lost and foreground the enduring legacy of racism and violence against African Americans.

In 2017, Bey completed “Night Coming Tenderly, Black,” a series of beautifully rendered and evocative images made in Ohio where the Underground Railroad once operated. As landscapes, the large black-and-white photographs mark a departure from the artist’s previous work, but they emphasize many of the same existential questions. The series, whose title is drawn from a Langston Hughes poem, conjures the spatial and sensory experience of an enslaved person’s escape to liberation as imagined by the artist. Shot by day but printed in deep shades of black and gray as if they were taken at night, these evocative and mysterious works explore blackness as both color and metaphor for race.

“Dawoud Bey: An American Project” will be presented in the High’s Wieland Pavilion Lower Level.

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Around Atlanta

Fantastical Creatures in Fernbank’s WildWoods

Published

1 week ago

March 5, 2025

Peachtree Corners Magazine staff

Fernbank Spirit Guides exhibit promotion with colorful wooden animal sculpture in a grassy area with lots of trees and bushes.

Encounter mythical creatures in a natural landscape when “Spirit Guides: Fantastical Creatures from the Workshop of Jacobo and María Ángeles” opens March 29.

Immerse yourself in a breathtaking outdoor exhibit that intertwines Mexican cultures and contemporary art when “Spirit Guides: Fantastical Creatures from the Workshop of Jacobo and María Ángeles” opens at Fernbank Museum.

From March 29 to August 3, guests can enter a supernatural world as they walk alongside towering, brightly colored and richly patterned sculptures in the natural landscape of Fernbank’s WildWoods.

Presented in both English and Spanish, this collection of brightly-colored fiberglass sculptures depicts imaginary hybrid animals and offers visitors an unparalleled journey into an imaginative take on the spiritual landscape of southern Mexico’s Indigenous traditions.

Inspiration and legend

In creating “Spirit Guides,” artists Jacobo and María Ángeles were inspired by an ancient Zapotec stone calendar. Indigenous to southern Mexico, Zapotec culture is deeply connected to plants, seasons and animals.

Large colorful sculpture of a winged mythical creature on an open patio in a wooded garden. — photo credit: Scott Dressel-Martin

“Spirit Guides” beckons visitors to travel into the spiritual landscape of Mexico’s Indigenous traditions through these animal sculptures that act as both spirit guides and astrological embodiments of human character.

Some of the hybrid animals depicted include a combination of a deer-butterfly or a coyote-fish. These larger-than-life sculptures depict patterns and designs that symbolize different aspects of Zapotec life and culture, such as happiness, fertility and community.

The artists have previously stated that, according to a Zapotec legend, when you are born an animal comes to you to serve as your protector in this world. This animal is your tona, a being that shares your destiny and soul.

Large colorful sculpture of a howling fish-wolf mythical creature in a wooded garden. — photo credit: Scott Dressel-Martin

Along with your tona, you also have a nahual, which is assigned based on the year of your birth. This spirit animal embodies characteristics that mirror your own personality.

As guests stand before the sculptures in WildWoods — some of which stand nearly 8 feet tall and 9 feet wide — they are made conscious of the profound connection between the natural and cosmological worlds.

About the Artists

Jacobo and María Ángeles are a married artist team based in Oaxaca, Mexico.

Joyful, fanciful and distinctively patterned, the Ángeles’ animal sculptures embrace both contemporary art and folk-art traditions. They employ and teach more than 100 artisans in their workshop, which has created artworks shown in museums around the world.

Exhibit details

By drawing inspiration from the Zapotec calendar and their own imaginations, the Ángeles team sculpted their own mythical creations.

This exhibit features eight towering, vibrant fiberglass sculptures of hybrid animals, intersecting art, mythology and identity. The sculptures were designed through a multi-step process that included conceptual sketches, small wooden renderings and papier mâché molds before casting the fiberglass.

A team of artisans then helped to paint the sculptures with striking colors and intricate geometric patterns inspired by Zapotec and other Indigenous designs, each with their own unique meaning.

Organized by Denver Botanic Gardens, “Spirit Guides: Fantastical Creatures from the Workshop of Jacobo and María Ángeles” is on view from March 29 – August 3, 2025. The exhibit is included with General Admission at Fernbank Museum and is free with CityPASS.

It will also be on view select nights when the museum is open, including during Fernbank After Dark and Fernbank … but Later.

For more information, please visit fernbankmuseum.org.

Around Atlanta

Fernbank Museum Roars with Excitement for New Exhibit

Published

2 months ago

January 21, 2025

Peachtree Corners Magazine staff

Dinosaur skeleton on display at a natural history museum

“Ultimate Dinosaurs” will run from February 8–May 4, 2025

“Ultimate Dinosaurs,” a special exhibit that explores the fascinating species that evolved in isolation in South America, Africa and Madagascar, stomps into Fernbank Museum from February 8 to May 4.

Through the exhibit, guests will experience an impressive blend of skeletal displays and augmented reality as they learn about the changing prehistoric landscape of dinosaurs in a new, modernized way.

Journey through the Mesozoic

Based on groundbreaking research from scientists around the world, “Ultimate Dinosaurs” highlights dinosaurs typically unfamiliar to North Americans and seeks to answer the question: why are the unique and bizarre dinosaurs in the Southern Hemisphere so different from their North American counterparts?

Dinosaur skeletons on display at an exhibit at a natural history museum — photo credit: Denver Museum of Nature & Science

Starting with the breakup of the supercontinent Pangaea, “Ultimate Dinosaurs” takes visitors on a journey through the Mesozoic Era (250-65 million years ago) and shows how continental drift affected the evolution of dinosaurs during the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.

“We are excited to have “Ultimate Dinosaurs” here at Fernbank and explore the unique ways that dinosaurs have evolved in isolation,” said program manager, Maria Moreno. “This exhibit combines rarely seen specimens with interactive stations for patrons of all ages to enjoy.”

“It is also very exciting to have an exhibit highlighting our mascot, the Giganotosaurus, one of the largest land predators to have ever lived,” Moreno added.

Dino displays and hands-on activities

Guests can view a variety of full-scale dinosaur displays from the Eoraptor, Malawisaurus, Suchomimus, Rapetosaurus and more, including 14 dinosaur skeletons. One highlight is the Giganotosaurus skeleton, which is also on view in Fernbank’s permanent exhibit, “Giants of the Mesozoic.”

An older couple reading information in front of a dinosaur bone display at a natural history museum exhibit — photo credit: Denver Museum of Nature & Science

This special exhibit will include several real fossils, some of which will be available to visitors to touch. Additionally, “Ultimate Dinosaurs” features several hands-on activities, one of which involves exploring the physical characteristics of dinosaurs’ stride patterns, crests and frills.

Another activity uses augmented reality to transform intricately detailed skeletons into moving, flesh-and-bone creatures.

To celebrate the grand opening of “Ultimate Dinosaurs,” Fernbank is hosting a family-friendly Dino Day on Saturday, February 8 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. The event is included with general admission.

Additionally, the giant screen film, “T. REX 3D,” will be showing through May 16.

Two smiling, young boys holding toy dinosaurs at a dinosaur exhibit at a natural history museum — photo credit: Denver Museum of Nature & Science

There will also be a lecture with Anthony (Tony) Martin, professor of practice in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Emory University, titled “On Frozen Ground Down Under: Polar Dinosaurs, Insects and other Cretaceous Fossils of Australia” this spring.

The details

Presented by the Science Museum of Minnesota, “Ultimate Dinosaurs” is open at Fernbank from February 8–May 4. The exhibit will be included with general admission tickets and is free with CityPASS.

For more information or to purchase tickets, visit fernbankmuseum.org.

Around Atlanta

The High Museum to Showcase “Thinking Eye, Seeing Mind”

Published

3 months ago

December 12, 2024

Peachtree Corners Magazine staff

Oil on paper artwork by Terry Winters. A large red circle with smaller blue circles on top of it and gold/yellow accents. All of it on a dark brown background.

The special exhibition of the Medford and Loraine Johnston Collection will run January 17 through May 25, 2025

In the mid-1970s, artist and Georgia State University professor Medford Johnston, along with his wife and collaborator Loraine, began collecting works by artists who were in the vanguard of contemporary art. Today, they hold one of the finest collections of postwar American drawings and related objects of its kind, now numbering more than 85 works.

In 2025, the High Museum of Art will present Thinking Eye, Seeing Mind: The Medford and Loraine Johnston Collection, featuring their collected works, which is a promised gift to the museum. Featuring artists such as Sol LeWitt, Brice Marden, Elizabeth Murray, Martin Puryear, Ed Ruscha, Al Taylor, Anne Truitt, Stanley Whitney and Terry Winters, among others, the exhibition will demonstrate how establishing the parameters of an art collection requires infinite patience, focus, discipline and a keen eye.

“The Johnstons have been friends of the High for a very long time. They’ve also built an impressive collection featuring works by many of the 20th century’s most significant abstract artists,” said the High’s Director Rand Suffolk. “We are honored that they have promised to leave their collection to the Museum where it will be preserved for future generations — and we are delighted that they are sharing it with our audiences now, hopefully inspiring the next generation of art collectors and supporters.”

A curated collection

The Johnstons’ story is a testament to, in the words of the High’s Wieland Family Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Michael Rooks, “knowing the difference between what is right and what is almost right” when building a collection.

Although the Johnstons acquired several paintings and objects when they first began collecting in 1972, they quickly narrowed their focus to drawing, primarily by artists working on the frontlines of abstraction in the mid-1960s during a time of great innovation and experimentation.

Ink drawing by Anne Truitt, rectangular lines and shapes made with black ink on off-white background — Anne Truitt (American, born 1921), *Ink Drawing ’59 [11]*, 1959, ink on paper, The Johnston Collection. © Estate of Anne Truitt / The Bridgeman Art Library / Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery, New York.

Rooks added, “Med and Loraine’s collection struck me at once by its single-minded focus on a specific moment in time, which was essentially the time of their contemporaries. The artists in their collection are like close friends to the Johnstons — in fact many are or were. What is equally astonishing about the collection is the Johnstons’ dogged pursuit of quality. Their in-depth knowledge of each artist’s practice combined with their understanding of specific qualities to look for — or more appropriately, to hold out for — will be a revelation to emerging collectors.”

The Johnstons have built their collection with the High in mind as the benefactor of their passion and discernment. For them, their collection “is a labor of love, pursued over more than 50 years, and we are delighted to be able to help the High Museum document and celebrate these important artists working during the same decades as our lives.”

About the exhibit

Thinking Eye, Seeing Mind: The Medford and Loraine Johnston Collection will be presented in the Special Exhibition Galleries on the second level of the High’s Stent Family Wing.

The exhibit is organized by the High Museum of Art and made possible through the generosity of sponsors:

Premier Exhibition Series Sponsor Delta Air Lines, Inc.
Premier Exhibition Series Supporters Mr. Joseph H. Boland, Jr., The Fay S. and W. Barrett Howell Family Foundation, Harry Norman Realtors and wish Foundation
Benefactor Exhibition Series Supporters Robin and Hilton Howell
Ambassador Exhibition Series Supporters Loomis Charitable Foundation and Mrs. Harriet H. Warren
Contributing Exhibition Series Supporters Farideh and Al Azadi, Mary and Neil Johnson, Mr. and Mrs. Baxter Jones, Megan and Garrett Langley, Margot and Danny McCaul, Wade A. Rakes II and Nicholas Miller and Belinda Stanley-Majors and Dwayne Majors.

Support has also been provided by the Alfred and Adele Davis Exhibition Endowment Fund, Anne Cox Chambers Exhibition Fund, Barbara Stewart Exhibition Fund, Dorothy Smith Hopkins Exhibition Endowment Fund, Eleanor McDonald Storza Exhibition Endowment Fund, The Fay and Barrett Howell Exhibition Fund, Forward Arts Foundation Exhibition Endowment Fund, Helen S. Lanier Endowment Fund, John H. and Wilhelmina D. Harland Exhibition Endowment Fund, Katherine Murphy Riley Special Exhibition Endowment Fund, Margaretta Taylor Exhibition Fund, RJR Nabisco Exhibition Endowment Fund and USI Insurance Services.

About the High Museum of Art

Located in the heart of Atlanta, the High Museum of Art connects with audiences from across the Southeast and around the world through its distinguished collection, dynamic schedule of special exhibitions and engaging community-focused programs.

Housed within facilities designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architects Richard Meier and Renzo Piano, the High features a collection of more than 19,000 works of art, including an extensive anthology of 19th- and 20th-century American fine and decorative arts; major holdings of photography and folk and self-taught work, especially that of artists from the American South; burgeoning collections of modern and contemporary art, including paintings, sculpture, new media and design; a growing collection of African art, with work dating from prehistory through the present; and significant holdings of European paintings and works on paper.

The High is dedicated to reflecting the diversity of its communities and offering a variety of exhibitions and educational programs that engage visitors with the world of art, the lives of artists and the creative process.

For more information about the High or to purchase tickets, visit high.org.

Top image: (from the collection) Terry Winters (American, born 1949), Orb, 2020, oil on paper, The Johnston Collection. © Terry Winters, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery, New York.