Art and Visual Culture
Rejoice, Resist, Rest: Images of Black Liberation from the Johnson Publishing Company Archives
Feb. 1, 2026 - May 17, 2026
The exhibition Rejoice, Resist, Rest: Images of Black Liberation from the Johnson Publishing Company Archives presents a selection of artworks, archival photographs, texts, and zines by students of the Atlanta University Center (AUC) Art History + Curatorial Studies Collective and the Spelman Photography Program produced through access to the Johnson Publishing Company Archive, an initiative supported by the Getty Research Institute (GRI).
Students engaged with historical photographs and other ephemera symbolic of the 20th-century Black American experience and responded via themes of freedom and liberation. The results include a variety of interpretations and responses, depending on a student’s personal, artistic, and academic interests. The project materialized in photography and curatorial studies courses taught in the Department of Art and Visual Culture at Spelman College under the direction of Nydia Blas, M.F.A., and Chad Dawkins, Ph.D.
This project is made possible by a grant awarded to Spelman College by the Getty Research Institute through the Johnson Publishing Company Archive initiative.
Develop Your Creative Genius at Spelman
Art is the creative expression of ideas, personal identity, and culture that enriches the world in which we live. It builds community, offers new perspectives, and provides unique insight to diverse traditions, philosophies and history. Students are provided with the knowledge and skills to effectively create art and understand it as visual rhetoric with histories, traditions and emerging theories that critique and advance the field.
Creating original work using various digital technologies in the Innovation Lab further enhances the majors. The department supports intellectual curiosity, experimentation, and highlights art making and its relationship to aesthetic, civic, cultural, social systems and technology. In addition to understanding and making art, students will develop skills related to the entrepreneurial side of the arts.
What We Offer in Art and Visual Culture
AVC Majors
AVC Minors
Objectives
- As an art and visual culture major you will be able to:
- Understand the role of the artist within historical and contemporary contexts.
- Use creative practices and research skills as a means of exploring interdisciplinary methods of inquiry that promote excellence in the arts.
- Demonstrate proficiency in the skills necessary for success in graduate school and/or the professional workplace.
- Demonstrate the potential for a lifelong appreciation and understanding of the visual arts through classroom as well as co-curricular experiences.
- Apply educational, experiential and experimental knowledge to further an appreciation of the arts.
