For a city to be considered a proper art hub, the quality of the art curation and criticism coming out of it must match the talent and imagination of the artists working there.
Atlanta has both, though we do not often enough get credit for either.
Take, for example, the two stories highlighted in this week’s Sketchbook. Each dives into how longstanding relationships with national art figures, foundations, and institutions provide opportunity for Atlanta-based artists —and Atlanta art lovers — to plug into global conversations.
At Jackson Fine Art in Buckhead, a major exhibition of Gordon Parks’s 1956 Civil Rights-era documentary photographs debuts tomorrow, organized in partnership with the New York-based Gordon Parks Foundation and curated by MacArthur Fellow Dawoud Bey. The show didn’t have to come to Atlanta. It’s here because Atlanta is the right place for it.
Then there’s Art Papers — founded in Atlanta in 1976, the longest-running nonprofit art magazine in the United States — gathering its community one last time to launch its final issue and mark 50 years of furthering the study of contemporary art. That conversation was always international. And, it was always rooted here.
Both stories are reminders that Atlanta has long been producing the work, thought, and space to be considered an international arts hub. The question is whether the rest of the world is finally ready to say so.
Are you giving Atlanta its proper due?
