Why hasn’t Atlanta, Georgia become a visual arts hub like some of its southern sister cities like Dallas or Miami have? Despite a rich tradition of producing some of our most beloved contemporary artists – Radcliffe Bailey, Shara Hughes, Lauren Quin and Roe Ethridge, to name a few – the answer is surprisingly simple and tragic.
In 1962, Air France flight 007 took off from Orly in Paris bound for Hartsfield-Jackson airport in Atlanta, only to crash a few minutes later. Of the 131 people on board, only two flight attendants survived. The next day, Andy Warhol painted 129 Jet die!who imagined a cover of New York Mirror commemorating those lost in the accident.
106 of these passengers were among Atlanta’s most esteemed and dedicated patrons of the arts, returning from a trip sponsored by the Atlanta Art Association to engage in museums in London, Amsterdam, Zurich, Rome, Florence, Lucerne and Paris.
It marked “the day Atlanta stopped,” as Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Eugene Patterson put it. “It’s doubtful that any American city has ever lost so much finesse all at once.”
The aftermath of the horrific crash, which was the deadliest to date, is what many in Atlanta blame for the arts community’s failure to get started. The crash happened at a pivotal time when Atlanta was on the brink of desegregation and making sweeping changes to attract commerce.
“The impact on the city in 1962 was comparable to that of 9/11 in New York,” said Ann Uhry Abrams, who wrote a book about the crash. Constitution of the Atlanta newspaper on the 40th anniversary of the incident.
The Louvre on loan Whistler’s mother by James Abbott McNeill Whistler – one of the tour group’s favorites – at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta as a gesture of sympathy for the grieving city. Meanwhile, the French government donated the sad bronze figure of Auguste Rodin The shadowwhich still stands today in the center of the courtyard of the High Museum.
The day before the group of board members, collectors, patrons and artists departed on their trip to Paris, they voted to put forth considerable effort, via organization and fundraising, to elevate the High Museum of Art from a regional museum to a world-class museum. institution.
IF YOU BUILD IT THEY WILL COME
Over the next few decades, as Atlanta struggled to regain a foothold in the cultural landscape, its focus shifted back to the local.
The galleries began to flourish in the 1980s and 1990s, and with them a new base of collectors. In 1978, for example, Judith Alexander opened the Alexander Gallery, dedicated to southern folk artists, including Nellie Mae Rowe. When Leo Castelli and Mary Boone were making waves in New York in the 1980s, art dealer Fay Gold took it upon herself to “bring New York artists to Atlanta”, where she planned to teach painting at a local art school, she told Artnet. News.
“I became a serious collector buying Andy Warhol from Leo Castelli,” she said. “I brought Oldenburg, Warhol, Basquiat, Haring to the south.”
She opened her gallery in Atlanta in 1980 with a group exhibition of some of the artists she collected in New York. As she put it, “Nobody knew Atlanta existed then, except Fay Gold!”
Gold Gallery then put Atlanta on the map by exhibiting at global art fairs such as FIAC, Art Basel and Frieze. Eventually she was commissioned to depict the estates of Robert Mapplethorpe, Louise Nevelson and Milton Avery, while showing local finds, such as Radcliffe Bailey.
“Local collectors would come to my gallery with pink and green color swatches for their home decor, and no art matched,” she said, noting Atlanta collectors’ primary interest in decorative art. . “Basically, the South [collectors] wanted what their grandmother had.
Jane Jackson of Jackson Fine Arts found success in Atlanta specializing in fine art photography. It opened in the city’s Buckhead neighborhood in 1990, just a few years before Elton John and his prolific photography collection migrated from New York. (She would eventually be named director of his collection.)
“Atlanta is a city of opportunity and growth. There are already wonderful art lovers and collectors living here who have been supporting the arts for over 20 years,” said Anna Walker, Gallery Director. Jackson’s clients have included Usher, Jon Bon Jovi, Ingrid Sischy and Chris Rock. New business is also coming in, she said, and growing “at an unprecedented rate, bringing with it a younger, more diverse and sophisticated audience that is looking for a more balanced life. Have you seen how green our city is in the spring? It’s breathtaking.
Some of these new city collectors include Sara and Jon Schlesinger, who recently moved their collection from San Francisco to Atlanta and enthusiastically purchased works by local artists. In March 2020, the couple donated 110 works, including pieces by Damien Hirst, Daniel Arsham, David Altjmed and Mike Kelley, to the Georgia Museum of Art.
Meanwhile, startup mogul and collector George Wells has donated his million-dollar collection to historic Black Morehouse College, saying“I thought if 100 years from now people want to see what human civilization is doing, especially the black community in Atlanta, I want to connect art to the cultural institution that has had the biggest impact on my life. .”
HOLLYWOOD OFFERS HOPE AND OBSTACLES
The ribbon-cutting ceremony for UTA Artists Space Atlanta, featuring Politician Stacey Abrams, Mayor Andre Dickens, UTA CEO Jeremy Zimmer, UTA Atlanta Co-Director Steve Cohen, Rich Paul of sports group KLUTCH, Co-Director of UTA Atlanta Rob Gibbs.
The Atlanta Movie Tax Credit transferred huge sums of money from Hollywood to the city, and with it, more infrastructure for artists. Companies that spend $500,000 on production and post-production of movies or TV shows shot in Georgia receive a 20% tax credit, thanks to the Georgia Entertainment Industry Investment Act. This led to a flood of productions moving film lots from Los Angeles to the southeast.
Last month, Los Angeles-based talent firm United Talent Agency, which has maintained a fine arts division in Tinsel Town since 2016, pulled the trigger by opening a permanent gallery in Atlanta, directly across from the High Museum. , in a building attached to its offices.
UTA had scheduled pop-up shows in Atlanta’s trendy Pullman Yards neighborhood for nearly a year. It opened with an exhibition of works by Los Angeles artist Mario Joyce, followed by a series of artists from the South.
“Atlanta is a temporary home for so many amazing storytellers and artists working on film and television productions,” said talent agent Steve Cohen, co-manager of UTA Atlanta. “But there’s also an abundance of emerging Southern voices residing here that make Atlanta a natural city to plant a flag in.”
Fay Gold said it more clearly: “The reason Atlanta has galleries is because of transplants from other cities wanting art… You have a lot of sophisticated people moving into the city. You have a lot of people who come here who know the art.
The ephemera of so many Atlanta residents is almost a joke among local artists. Last fall, a group of local artists launched Temporary Art Center as a pop-up space during Atlanta’s first Art Week, based on this very phenomenon.
“Everything in Atlanta is temporary,” said one of the founders, artist Scott Ingram, who has lived and worked in Atlanta since the 1990s. “Pop-up shows work better here than gallery shows.”
Ingram is one of many artists who work in temporary studios, also named for sentiment. Many of the artists who work there have gallery representation, including Addams and Ollman from Portland, Kavi Gupta from Chicago, and Derek Eller from New York, but none of them have a dedicated gallery in Atlanta.
“Here, no one really feels challenged by the gallery owners. I haven’t worked with one in years,” Ingram said. Neither does artist Lonnie Holley, who has had his studio in Atlanta since 2010. He works with Blum & Poe in Los Angeles and Edel Assanti in London.
“They don’t have the range that I had,” Gold said. “It’s not easy to manage a gallery; it is a very expensive proposition.
Some Atlanta artists today find more work in the entertainment industry than in the visual arts. Antonio Darden, another artist who works in the temporary studios, told me that he estimates that 75% of his artist friends are members of Union Behind Entertainment, the union for film set employees (whose membership costs $1,500).
According to Darden, this economic boost is a double-edged sword. “I did it and the work almost killed me. It wasn’t worth it,” he said of the long days of filming that left him too exhausted to work in his art studio.
AN EYE TOWARDS THE FUTURE
2022 Johnson Lowe Atlanta Art Week Kick-Off Party at the Waldorf Astoria. Photo by Kia Tavernier.
The genesis of Atlanta’s contemporary art community is marked by the unique set of circumstances that deprived it of the financial resources that could have given it a world-class museum, a dedicated group of wealthy collectors, and a traditional gallery system. that goes with. On the other side of the coin, Atlanta has been given carte blanche to create a unique artistic ecosystem that is not dictated by the traditional status quo.
“Everyone who visits says Atlanta is reminiscent of LA 10 years ago, but we’re different, there’s a certain flair, and we’re so excited that the city is finally starting to be recognized for its contributions to the arts,” said said Kendra. Walker, who kicked off the first edition of Atlanta Art Week last year for local galleries to come together to hold events across the city. In October, the event expands to invite non-local galleries to come and present in Atlanta.
“We want Atlanta Art Week to be a catalyst for the growth of the city’s art scene by bringing everyone together and shining a spotlight on this artistic hub.”
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