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High Museum announces major Nellie Mae Rowe Exhibition
For the last 15 years of her life, self-taught artist Nellie Mae Rowe (1900-1982) lived on a busy thoroughfare just outside of Atlanta and welcomed visitors to her “Playhouse,” which she decorated with found-object installations, handmade dolls, chewing-gum sculptures and hundreds of drawings.
This fall, the High Museum of Art will present “Really Free: The Radical Art of Nellie Mae Rowe” (Sept. 3, 2021-Jan. 9, 2022), featuring nearly 60 works drawn from the Museum’s leading collection of her art. The exhibition is the first major presentation of her work in more than 20 years and the first to consider her practice as a radical act of self-expression and liberation in the post-civil rights-era South. “Really Free” marks the Museum’s first partnership with the Art Bridges Foundation, an organization dedicated to expanding access to American art, which will allow the exhibition to travel nationally into 2023.
“The High was among the first American museums to establish a department dedicated to self-taught art, and today we hold the foremost collection of work by artists without formal training from the American South, including Nellie Mae Rowe,” said Rand Suffolk, the High’s Nancy and Holcombe T. Green, Jr., director. “We are incredibly proud of this distinction and honored to celebrate Rowe’s life and work through this exhibition. Her art has been a fixture in our collection galleries for decades, and this exhibition allows a much-needed deeper look into her bold artistic production.”
Katherine Jentleson, the High’s Merrie and Dan Boone curator of folk and self-taught art, added, “The exuberant color and imaginative design that characterize so many of Rowe’s drawings—which comprise most of her surviving work—is so aesthetically pleasing that her work is often taken at face value. This show will really explore her drawing practice, tracing its emergence and relationship to the installations of her Playhouse, as well considering the artistic path she blazed for herself as a radical act undertaken at a time when Black, women and self-taught artists struggled for respect and visibility.”
Rowe began making art as a child in rural Fayetteville, Georgia, but only found the time and space to reclaim her artistic practice in the late 1960s, following the deaths of her second husband and members of the family for whom she worked. Although she did not speak much about politics or social movements, she purposefully embraced her creativity and devoted her life to making art during a time when civil rights leaders and Black feminist politicians and artists were igniting great change across the country.
As she filled it with drawings and sculptures, Rowe’s Playhouse became an Atlanta attraction, which fostered her growing reputation and public reception. She began to exhibit her art outside of her home, beginning with “Missing Pieces: Georgia Folk Art, 1770-1976,” a bicentennial exhibition that brought attention to several Southern self-taught artists, including Rowe and Howard Finster, and traveled to venues across Georgia. In 1982, the year she died, Rowe’s work received a new level of acclaim, as she was honored in a solo exhibition at Spelman College and included as one of three women artists in the Corcoran Gallery of Art’s landmark exhibition “Black Folk Art in America: 1930-1980.”
The High began collecting her drawings in 1980. Between 1998 and 2003, major gifts totaling more than 130 works from trailblazing Atlanta art dealer Judith Alexander, a friend and ardent supporter of Rowe, solidified the High’s holdings as the largest public repository of Rowe’s art. Recently, the Museum announced another major gift of 17 drawings by Rowe from Atlantans Harvie and Charles Abney. Selections from this gift, as well as recent gifts and pledges of Rowe’s drawings and photographs of the artist and her Playhouse taken by Lucinda Bunnen and Melinda Blauvelt, will be presented as part of the exhibition.
“Really Free” will feature the colorful, and at times simple, sketches Rowe made on found materials in the 1960s and reveal their relationship to her most celebrated, highly complex compositions on paper of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Other sections of the exhibition will explore themes in Rowe’s work such as depictions of women, her childhood, images of her garden, and her experimentation with materials, including recycling cast-offs to make handmade dolls and chewing-gum sculptures. The final galleries will focus on her career breakthrough and ruminations on death and the afterlife.
In addition to works on paper and sculptures, the exhibition will feature photographs as well as components and footage from the experimental film on Rowe’s life to be released by Opendox in 2022, “The World is Not My Own,” which includes an artful reconstruction of her Playhouse. Through these elements, visitors can experience the lively art environment she created in and outside of her home.
“Really Free” will be presented in the lower level of the High’s Wieland Pavilion.
Exhibition Publication
“Really Free: The Radical Art of Nellie Mae Rowe” is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue co-published by the High and DelMonico Books that reproduces the High’s vast Rowe collection and features a lead essay by Jentleson with contributions from documentary producer Ruchi Mital, scholar Destinee Filmore and award-winning artist Vanessa German. The High also will publish a suite of online content, including author videos, a virtual tour and additional interpretive material, as part of a new library of collection-focused digital resources that launches with “Really Free.”
Source: High Museum of Art Atlanta Press Release
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.
“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.
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.
“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?
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.”
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.
Related programming
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.
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.
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