Past Exhibitions
The Spelman College Museum of Fine Art is regularly named one of the best college and university museums in Atlanta. Its exhibitions receive popular and critical acclaim for their thoughtful, visually compelling, and intellectually stimulating exhibitions that complement the academic curriculum and expand Atlanta’s art offerings.
The Museum’s diverse exhibition history reflects a variety of exhibitions featuring works by emerging, mid-career, and established artists. These original mission-focused exhibitions have been distinguished by accessibility, relevance, and scholarship.
The exhibitions — which are often accompanied by original publications—focus on important topics and position Spelman College as an important thought-leader on the role of black women artists and how they contribute to, shape, and define art and visual culture throughout history.
IngridMwangiRobertHutter: Constant Triumph and the artists’ performance of Copper Coloured Gold
(February 4 – May 14, 2011)
The Museum is proud that IngridMwangiRobertHutter: Constant Triumph is the cover story of the May/June 2011 issue of Art Papers—the magazine dedicated to art and culture in the world today. Read the review by Rebecca Dimling Cochran.
Read previously published reviews by Catherine Fox and Kristin Juarez.
View a segment from the performance of Copper Coloured Gold.
Examine an object feature of Andrea Barnwell Brownlee discussing IngridMwangiRobertHutter’s 2008 video Eastleigh Crossing.
Evenly Yoked: Bradley McCallum & Jacqueline Tarry
September 9 – December 4, 2010
Evenly Yoked, the latest video endeavor by Brooklyn-based artists Bradley McCallum and Jacqueline Tarry, will launch the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art’s 2010/2011 exhibition season.
Evenly Yoked: Bradley McCallum & Jacqueline Tarry also features new works from the Projection series, a group of paintings that explore the intersection of race and the entertainment industry. Evenly Yoked will be presented alongside other works such as Bloodlines (2007), Cut (2006), Exchange (2007), Topsy Turvy (2006), and Whitewash (2006 – 2009). This exhibition of recent works by McCallum and Tarry underscores the role of autobiography, performance, and masquerade in the artists’ career.
To learn more about the exhibition, read the full press release.
Evenly Yoked: Bradley McCallum & Jacqueline Tarry is organized by the Contemporary Museum, Baltimore and is a version of the recent exhibition Bearing Witness: Bradley McCallum & Jacqueline Tarry presented by the Contemporary Museum and the Maryland Institute College of Art.
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| Photo: Evenly Yoked Exhibit Opening |
January 21 – May 15, 2010An American Consciousness:
Robin Holder’s Mid-Career Retrospective
Installation view of An American Consciousness: Robin Holder’s Mid-Career Retrospective
An American Consciousness: Robin Holder’s Mid-Career Retrospective featured 65 original works by acclaimed New York-based printmaker and art educator Robin Holder. Throughout her career, Holder (b. 1952) has been recognized for integrating a layered process of image making while addressing issues such as race, gender, religion, and cultural diversity in the United States of America. Her self-reflective images are meditations on identities, women’s empowerment, and social realities. As the vivid, multi-layered works in American Consciousness demonstrate, she draws from her identity as a woman of many ethnic, sociopolitical, and spiritual influences.
Using a multi-tiered approach, Holder layers subtle, often translucent colors, forms, textures, and vignettes, one over the other and creates works that are thought provoking and richly textured. Her unique approach to addressing the complexities of American identities results in images that are rooted in beauty and substance.
An American Consciousness: Robin Holder’s Mid-Career Retrospective was organized by the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland, College Park. Dorit Yaron, Deputy Director the Driskell Center was the exhibition curator. It was made possible through support of a special fund from the Office of the President, University of Maryland, and major support from the Maryland State Arts Council.
September 10 – December 5, 2009 Undercover: Performing and Transforming Black Female Identities
Installation view of Undercover: Performing and Transforming Black Female Identities
Undercover: Performing and Transforming Black Female Identities was an original exhibition, which examined the social implications of race, gender, and disguise. Undercover considered the complicated practice of black women disguising themselves as well as the historic trend of others camouflaging themselves as black women. The exhibition includes painting, photographs, sculpture, video, and works on paper, that were created from 1926 to today. Featuring more than 75 works, Undercover investigated relevant topics such as self-portraiture, masquerade, cross-dressing, and blackface performance.
Undercover was based on the premise that people manipulate their outward appearance for a variety of reasons including: to alter their identity, to gain access that they would not otherwise have, to earn the trust of an individual or an organization, to deflect attention, to mimic, or to garner confidential information. While going undercover is popularly affiliated with law enforcement and espionage, in Undercover it was regarded as a critical strategy for artists to carry out or debunk cultural traditions, confront or reinforce stereotypes, explore fetishes, and challenge sociocultural norms.
Undercover included works by well-known artists including Lorraine O’Grady, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson, Doris Ulmann, and James VanDerZee. It also introduced promising emerging and midcareer artists such as Renée Cox, Lalla Essaydi, Ellen Gallagher, Myra Greene, Lyle Ashton Harris, Lauren Kelley, Kalup Linzy, Nandipha Mntambo, Magdalene Odundo, Berni Searle, and many others. Countless exhibitions have examined identity and race. Undercover, however, explored broader perspectives about Black women and disguise for the first time and approaches the theme of identity anew.
Undercover was organized by the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art and curated by Andrea Barnwell Brownlee, Ph.D., Director of the Museum, and Karen Comer Lowe, Director of Comer Art Advisory, LLC.
January 29 – May 16, 2009 Showcase & Tell: Treasures from
the Spelman College Permanent Collection
Installation view of Showcase & Tell: Treasures from the Spelman College Permanent Collection
Over the course of more than six decades, Spelman College has amassed an impressive collection of African and African American art created by renowned artists including Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, Jacob Lawrence, Hale Woodruff, and Nancy Elizabeth Prophet. Showcase & Tell: Treasures from the Spelman College Permanent Collection featured more than 60 works and traced the evolution of the College’s permanent collection. It examined Spelman’s history from the founding of the department of art in 1931 to the development of the Atlanta University Center Coordinated Art Program in 1965 and the establishment of the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art in 1996.
The College acquired its collection through the generosity of alumnae, artists, trustees, and friends. The exhibition featured a selection of gifts to the College including African objects from diplomat and Spelman College trustee Mabel Murphy Smythe-Haith, a bequest from artist Selma Burke, and the promised gift of African ceramics created by women who reside throughout Africa from Gale and William Simmons.
In addition, Showcase & Tell presented important works by celebrated African American artists Herman “Kofi” Bailey, Sam Gilliam, Faith Ringgold, Henry Ossawa Tanner as well as Atlanta-based artists James Adair, Jenelsie Walden Holloway, Debra Johnson, and Freddie Styles. Recent acquisitions by artists including Amalia Amaki, iona rozeal brown, and the artist collaborative Bradley McCallum and Jacqueline Tarry were also on view.
Showcase & Tell , an original exhibition curated by Anne Collins Smith, the Curator of Collections at the Museum, captured Spelman’s visual arts history and positioned the Museum as a repository for important works. The exhibition explored the Museum’s mission to focus on works by and about women of the African Diaspora.
September 10 – December 6, 2008 María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Dreaming of an Island
Installation view of Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons: Dreaming of an Island
Throughout her distinguished twenty-year career, María Magdalena Campos-Pons (b. 1959) has created a unique body works that examine her ancestral displacement from Africa, her self-imposed exile from Cuba, and her experiences as an Afro-Cuban women living in North America. María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Dreaming of an Island, featured bold large-format Polaroid photographs, mixed-media installations, and videos that explore personal and national identity, cultural complexities, and socioeconomic politics.
Since she emerged on the international art scene in the 1980s, her work has raised larger questions about the broader geopolitical implications of race, gender, and ethnicity. By revisiting themes such as water, hair, umbilical cords, orishas (Yoruba deities), and self-portraiture, she illuminates her complex personal world view.
Campos-Pons’s work has been featured in many prominent exhibitions: Spoken Softly with Mama at the Museum of Modern Art (1998); the 49th Venice Bienale (2001); and in the mid-career retrospective María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Everything is Separated by Water (2007), which was organized by the Indianapolis Museum of Art. María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Dreaming of an Island, the artist’s first solo exhibition of Campos-Pons’s work in Georgia, was an original exhibition curated by Andrea Barnwell Brownlee, Ph.D., the Director of the Museum.
January 24 – May 24, 2008 (Part II) September 14 – December 8, 2007 (Part I)
Cinema Remixed & Reloaded: Black Woman Artists and the Moving Image Since 1970
Installation View of Cinema Remixed & Reloaded: Black Women Artists and the Moving Image Since 1970
The Spelman College Museum of Fine Art collaborated with the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston to present the groundbreaking exhibition Cinema Remixed & Reloaded: Black Women Artists and the Moving Image Since 1970.It included projections, installations, interactive CD-ROM projects, experimental film, and video work by more than 40 artists. Unlike the more conventional genres of painting and sculpture, video art, the focus of this exhibition, emerged in the latter half of the 20 th century.
Cinema Remixed & Reloaded was the first exhibition to examine the critical contributions that black women continue to make to the field of video art. Cinema Remixed & Reloaded featured works by established artists who became interested in the video medium in the 70s and 80s, such as Camille Billops, Barbara McCullough, Howardena Pindell, and Adrian Piper. They were presented alongside such midcareer artists as Berni Searle, Lorna Simpson, Kara Walker, and Carrie Mae Weems, who continually garner international acclaim. Works by emerging artists, including Elizabeth Axtman, Debra Edgerton, Lauren Kelley, Jessica Ann Peavy, Pamela Sunstrum, and Lauren Woods, were also included.
Works featured in Cinema Remixed & Reloaded examined themes that were provocative, humorous, socially engaging, and thought provoking. While exploring personal experiences and dissecting popular visual culture, the artists in this exhibition provide contemporary views on several important topics including memory, loss, alienation, racial politics, gender inequities, empowerment, and the pursuit of power. Cinema Remixed & Reloaded examined the many rich contributions black women artists make to the medium. Part I focused on themes that engage the complex perceptions surrounding the black female body and the spaces of empowerment where women have defined themselves. Part II continued the explorations raised in Part I and examined such subjects as classic cinema and the male gaze.
Cinema Remixed & Reloaded was curated by Andrea Barnwell Brownlee, Ph.D., Director of the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art and Valerie Cassel Oliver, Curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston.
January 18 – May 19, 2007 Hale Woodruff, Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, and the Academy
Installation View of Hale Woodruff, Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, and the Academy
Hale Woodruff (1900 – 1980) and Nancy Elizabeth Prophet (1890 – 1960) established the art programs in the Atlanta University Center in the 1930s. While Woodruff is widely recognized for originating the “Atlanta University Annual Exhibition of Painting, Sculpture and Prints by Negro Artists”—an art competition that lasted from 1942 to 1970—his own artistic accomplishments have not been adequately examined.
Although Prophet created an impressive body of work (most of which are currently lost or destroyed) and was regarded as one of the most talented American sculptors by American and European critics alike in the late 1920s and 1930s, until this exhibition her work had never been the subject of an exhibition outside of her home state of Rhode Island. Additionally, the exhibition presented all extant sculptures by Prophet for the first time. Hale Woodruff, Nancy Elizabeth Prophet and the Academy brought the lives, efforts, and work Woodruff and Prophet into a critical dialogue for the first time.
Despite segregation, Woodruff and Prophet created one of the premiere institutions for art instruction for African Americans. Hale Woodruff, Nancy Elizabeth Prophet and the Academy positioned Woodruff and Prophet as the artist-educators and institution builders who challenged and transformed the existing academic structure and art offerings for African Americans.
