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SAVE THE DATE
Night of Ideas: Behold the Land
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Atlanta’s popular Night of Ideas returns on Friday, March 1, 2024 for its third annual event. Taking its inspiration from Behold the Land, a speech by W. E. B. Du Bois (1946), and a series of photographs by Atlanta-based artist Sheila Pree Bright (2022), the event will feature conversations, an Equitable Dinners experience, nature walks, screenings and performances, inviting attendees to embrace our collective connection to land and imagine new patterns to urban life. As a major city in the South, how Atlanta steps into the future will have a significant impact on the entire region both socially and ecologically.
With the participation of Chandra Farley, Chief Sustainability Officer for the City of Atlanta, photographic artist Sheila Pree Bright, environmental scientist Na’Taki Osborne Jelks, writer Hannah Palmer, urbanist Mark Chambers, Muskogee scholar and author Laura Harjo, French historian in architecture and environment Sebastien Marot, Senegalese singer and performer Ngnima Sarr, aka T.I.E, and others, Behold the Land explores the theme of urban mutations through the lenses of the environment, Afro-futurism and artistic expression.
How are cities preparing for the environmental challenges to come?
Will Atlanta become the model for an ecological and equitable city?
These questions, and more, will be examined during this unique evening where culture and philosophy converge.
Presented by Villa Albertine, the City of Atlanta Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs, and Atlanta History Center, with Associate curators: Clint Fluker & Nasim Fluker (Thrd Space).
The Atlanta History Center’s exhibitions and bookshop are open to the public during the event. Night of Ideas is free and open to the public.
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Finding A Way To Harmony Restored
The Mayor's Office of Cultural Affairs' Conservation and Maintenance Team has completed restoration work on Finding A Way To Harmony, the mixed-media tile mosaic by Helen Helwig, installed at South Bend Center.
Finding a Way to Harmony is a detailed mosaic with handmade tiles that combine metal and sculpted clay into vibrant patterns that depict the freedom of nature. The artwork was recently vandalized with graffiti written in permanent marker. The OCA's Conservation & Maintenance team was able to chemically remove the vandalism, and restore the entire piece.
Maintaining a vast public art collection for a major city can be challenging at times. That’s why the City of Atlanta appreciates the communities’ notifications– it helps us stay aware of the condition of public art works across the city.
To report damage to any City-owned artwork in City Parks, please email the Office of Parks (click here).
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Vandalism of Public Art Affects Everyone
Public Art serves as a vibrant expression of a community's identity and cultural heritage. When vandals target these artworks, the consequences extend far beyond mere property damage. Municipal Art Collections are carefully curated to reflect the unique character of a city, and each piece contributes to the collective narrative that binds residents together. Vandalism disrupts this narrative, erasing the shared stories and cultural significance that these artworks embody.
The impact of vandalism on public art is not limited to the immediate financial cost of repairs. When individuals deface public art, they undermine the efforts of both our artists and city planners to create an environment that fosters creativity, stimulates dialogue, and promotes a shared sense of community.
Protecting public art is not just about preserving physical objects, it's about safeguarding the intangible bonds that tie a community together while fostering an environment where creativity can flourish. Municipalities must actively engage in education and awareness campaigns to ensure that public art continues to be of service to the community, offering inspiration and lending to the cultural landscape of our community.
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Fight For Your Rights!
A New Cultural Experience
The Atlanta History Center has partnered with the Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs' Cultural Experience Project to provide an exciting new school tour for 6th grade Atlanta Public School students for the 2023-2024 school year.
The exhibition, Fight for Your Rights, conveys the importance of key people and events that shaped the Atlanta Student Movement. Students learn what it takes to be a Freedom Fighter-- using non-violent civil disobedience-- through images, discussions, and interactive exercises.
The main themes within these activities include activism, human rights, identity, and engaging resources. Resources are included to continue research and knowledge about the Civil Rights Movement and the fight for freedom.
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The OCA Celebrates Black History Month with Three Curated Exhibitions
The City of Atlanta will host three specially curated exhibitions in recognition of Black History Month and the contributions of these artists and key figures to our society.
All exhibitions are free and open to the public, during facility standard operating hours.
Chastain Arts Center Gallery:
NAAHBCU, Living the Legacy – Celebrating 25 Years.
This group exhibition of the National Alliance of Artists from Historically Black Colleges and University features works of various mediums, curated by Christine M. Perry-Espinoza.
Now – March 9, 2024
Artist Reception March 2nd
Mayor's Gallery at City Hall:
A Phoenix Reborn: A Photographic Reflection of Atlanta’s Past 50 Years
Chronicling Atlanta's legacy over the past fifty years. Featuring the works of Jim Alexander and Sue Ross.
Now – March 15, 2024
Gallery 72:
Let our Rejoicing Rise
The art of Michael Bynum and Harun Black.
February 16 – March 31, 2024
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Upcoming Events and Classes
at Chastain Arts Center
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Art Classes:
Winter 2024 Session
Join us for an art class this Winter 2024 session at Chastain Arts Center (CAC)!
Located in historic Chastain Park, CAC offers youth, teen, and adult art classes in a variety of mediums year-round.
Winter Session Dates:
Now - March 16, 2024
10 Week Session
Registration is Open via iPARCS, in person at CAC, and via phone at 404-252-2927.
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Emory University and the Ministry of Culture of the Hellenic Republic enter into a cultural cooperation agreement
In a ceremony at the Carlos Museum on January 22, Emory University and the Ministry of Culture of the Hellenic Republic entered into a long-term cultural cooperation agreement. The agreement, signed by the Greek Minister of Culture Lina Medoni and Provost Rave V. Bellmkonda, aims to advance knowledge of Greek culture while safeguarding its heritage, enhances educational opportunities for students, and returns three objects in the collection of the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory to the Greek ministry.
This decision follows two years of discussions and aligns with the museum's commitment to resolving claims on its collections. The returned artifacts were identified in court cases related to antiquities trafficking in Greece, challenging previous provenance histories.
The Carlos Museum anticipates partnering with Greek museums on object loans and exhibitions for Emory and the Atlanta community.
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The Georgia Arts Accelerator
Hosted by the Georgia Center for Nonprofits (GCN) and funded by the Georgia Council for the Arts (GCA), the Georgia Arts Accelerator Program offers arts organizations from across the state additional opportunities to strengthen their institutions.
Each program is tailored to the differing needs of Georgia’s arts organizations – whether you’re looking to manage facilities, build up staff skills, or stabilize your organization following COVID. The GCA is fully funding program costs for qualifying organizations so make sure not to miss out.
Visit the GCN website for more information.
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Community Arts Funding
AARP Purpose Prize
Nonprofit founders age 50 and older are recognized with $50,000 and a year of support for broader impact.
Deadline: February 29
Crossroads Fund
New and small community-based organizations involved in social change can receive up to $15,000 for operating or project expenses.
Deadline: February 12
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Addressing the Harms of Financialization in Healthcare
Funding supports research on financialization and systemic racism in healthcare with an emphasis on advocacy and community engagement.
Deadline: February 12
Teiger Foundation
Contemporary Visual Art Initiative
Funding supports curator-led projects in contemporary visual art, including group exhibitions, single-artist surveys, community-engaged projects, digital exhibitions, and more.
Deadline: February 14
National Endowment for the Arts
Grants for Arts Projects (GAP)
Up to $100,000 available for arts projects that engage the public, educate, integrate health and well-being strategies, or improve arts sector capacity.
Deadline: February 15
Dollar General Literacy Foundation
Grant Program
Up to $10,000 is available for adult and family literacy programs, and up to $3,000 is available for summer reading programs.
Deadline: February 15
Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts
Grant Program
Up to $30,000 in funding available for production-related expenses for publication, exhibition, film, and public programs.
Deadline: February 25
Clif Family Foundation Operational Support Grants
Small grants are available to support projects addressing equitable community health outcomes and safeguarding the environment and natural resources.
Deadline: March 1
South Arts Presentation Grants
Grants of up to $9,500 fund the presentation of a Southern artist for a performing arts, literary arts, visual arts, or film engagement.
Deadline: March 1
The Jim Henson Foundation
Artist Grants
Production grants ($7,000), Workshop grants ($3,000), and Family grants ($4,000) are available to support the creation of innovative puppet theater.
Deadline: March 1
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Atlanta Regional Commission's Cultural Forums are Back
February 13, 2024 @ 6:00 PM
The Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) has announced the return of their newly revamped Cultural Forums series. The purpose of the forums is to create a regional dialogue around art and civic engagement, going beyond the sole networking format of the previous forums. These gatherings offer a space for historically underrepresented creatives to build community power, share skills and resources, and co-create a collective action that engages a civic or social issue.
With ARC's support, attendees will have the opportunity to shape the when, where, and how of future forums.
Location: Onward Theatre -
711 Catherine St SW Suite 200, Atlanta, GA 30310.
Space is limited so RSVP today.
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Hammonds House Museum Launches 2024 Season with Two Bodies of Work by Renowned artist Precious Lovell
Now through April 15, 2024
Hammonds House Museum launches the 2024 exhibition season with renowned artist Precious Lovell’s compelling exploration of the experiences of Black American women and their interconnected relationships in her two new thematic collections, The Fabric Of Our Lives: The Ties That Bind and Ex-Domestication. Curated by the new Hammonds House Museum Artistic Chair Halima Taha.
Click here for more information.
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The Gift on exhibition via the ZuCot Virtual Gallery
This exhibition delves into the global impact of hip hop culture and its undeniable influence. Its roots in blackness and rebellion speaks through the music, migration, fashion, and art. It's our gift to the the world!
The exhibition is currently open in person and virtually (in collaboration with Microsoft) allowing the works and narratives accessible to patrons around the world!
Featuring original works by Horace Imhotep, Alfred Conteh, Michi Meko, Petie Parker, Charlotte Riley-Webb, Maurice Evans, Nathan Addley, Michael Reese, collaborative works by Charly Palmer with D.L. Warfield and Charly Palmer with Paper Frank.
Visit ZuCot's Virtual Gallery.
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Alliance Theatre: Furlough’s Paradise
Through March 3, 2024
Winner of the 20th annual Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition, Furlough’s Paradise is a poignant new play examining the dynamics that shape our lives and lead us to where we make our homes. Cousins Sade and Mina, raised like sisters but now leading very different lives, return to their childhood town for the funeral of their mother and aunt. While Sade is on a three-day furlough from prison and Mina experiences a brief reprieve from her career and life on the West Coast, the two try to make sense of grief, home, love, and kinship. But traumas and resentments from the past, both real and surreal, threaten to pull them apart, all as time ticks towards the correctional officer's arrival.
For tickets and more information, click here.
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Sonya Clark: We Are Each Other
High Museum of Art
Through February 18, 2024
For thirty years, multidisciplinary artist Sonya Clark has focused her work on the African diaspora in the United States to confront, elucidate, and reframe its history. In her work, craft and community are intertwined; her participatory projects promote new collective encounters across racial, gender, and socioeconomic divisions. Sonya Clark: We Are Each Other is a major traveling exhibition focused on the artist’s community-centric and participatory projects.
The exhibition is co-organized by the High Museum of Art, the Cranbrook Art Museum in metro Detroit, and the Museum of Arts and Design in New York.
Click here for more information
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Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina
High Museum of Art
Opening February 16, 2024
The High Museum of Art will be the exclusive Southeast venue for this landmark exhibition featuring nearly sixty ceramic objects created by enslaved African Americans in Edgefield, South Carolina, in the decades before the Civil War. These nineteenth-century vessels testify to the lived experiences, artistic agency, and material knowledge of those who created them.
The works include monumental storage jars by potter and poet Dave (later recorded as David Drake, ca. 1801–1870s) and rare examples of utilitarian wares and face vessels by unrecorded makers. Hear Me Now will also link the past to the present with work by leading contemporary Black artists who have responded to or whose practice connects with the Edgefield story, including Theaster Gates, Simone Leigh, and Woody De Othello. This exhibition is organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Click here for more information
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Ruth and the Green Book
Center for Puppetry Arts
Through February 25, 2024
Eight-year-old Ruth and her family are traveling from Chicago to Alabama in the 1950s. The family is turned away from hotels, gas stations, and restaurants. Finally, Ruth’s family is introduced to “The Green Book.” Created in response to the humiliation and violence experienced by Black Americans while traveling in the Jim Crow south, this pivotal publication was an indispensable guide for Ruth’s family and many others to find a safe, welcoming route to travel through segregated America.
Using an innovative combination of puppetry and animated projections that are inspired by the book’s illustrations, this collaboration between Artistic Director Jon Ludwig and author Calvin Alexander Ramsey celebrates the great guidebook that helped keep travelers safe.
Click here for tickets.
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Out on Film: Black Power Showcase
Out Front Theatre Company
February 11, 2024 @ 6:30 PM
Join Out Front Theatre Company for two dynamic film screenings as a part of their Out on Film: Black Power Showcase.
At 6:30 PM, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution presents the short documentary The Dancer, about Gerard Alexander, who performed around the world but ended up homeless in Atlanta. Directed by Emmy Award-winning filmmakers Ryon Horne and Tyson Horne, and written by Matt Kempner, this film explores the beautiful and tragic life of Alexander.
Then, at 7:30 PM, the immersive and sensorial, BEYOND THE AGGRESSIVES: 25 YEARS LATER revisits four of the original subjects from Daniel Peddle’s groundbreaking 2005 film THE AGGRESSIVES. The now iconic Kisha, Trevon, Octavio and Chin are back, sharing an array of their triumphs and challenges.
Click here for more information
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Music from the Movement
True Colors Theatre Company
February 15, 2024 @ 4:00 PM
True Colors Theatre collaborates with MARTA to infuse art into the community. The performance will take place on the concourse level of the West End MARTA station.
Click here for more information
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Carlos Simon Curates
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra
February 15 - February 16, 2024
@ 8 PM
Grammy®-nominated composer Carlos Simon has curated a program for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra that shines a spotlight on local artists, including the Spelman and Morehouse College Glee Clubs, on Thursday and Friday, February 15 and 16 at 8 pm at Atlanta Symphony Hall.
Conductor Jonathan Taylor Rush leads the orchestra in a program that features works by Simon, known for imbuing a powerful social conscience into his works and exploring contemporary life in Black America.
Click here for more information
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Screening of Uprooted: The Journey of Jazz Dance
Beacon Dance Studio
February 18, 2024 @ 1 PM
Uprooted, free of any artificial narrative, is a cinematic exploration of the art form of Jazz Dance, paying homage to its lineage, celebrating its many re-interpretations and through a fast- moving kaleidoscope of movement and music will, inspire the dancer of tomorrow to keep this art form alive.
Click here for more information
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Black History Month Family Fun Day
Manga African Dance Inc.
February 21, 2024 @ 12 PM
Celebrate our diverse history with a fun and educational event honoring African American and African Cultures, enriching the understanding of our heritage for younger generations.
Located at the West End Family and Community Center.
Click here for more information
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Blacklisted: Book Fair
National Black Arts Festival
February 24 - February 25, 2024
@ 12 PM
NBAF proudly announces their Black History Month program, Blacklisted! Banned Book Fair + Conference on Saturday and Sunday, February 24th & 25th!
Taking place from 12 PM - 6 PM at
The Loudermilk Conference Center in Downtown Atlanta, Blacklisted! will feature celebrated authors, scholars, and activists, Tayari Jones, Dr. Yaba Blay, Feminista Jones, Nic Stone, Dr. Akinyele Umoja, Gerald L. Coleman, Dr. Renée Alexander Craft, and Kimberly Latrice Jones, among many others!
The NBAF Blacklisted! Banned Book Fair is FREE & OPEN to the public with RSVP.
For the full schedule and to register, click on the link here or visit NBAF’s website for more info.
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Submit Your Content
To share your content in the OCA Newsletter, please click the link below to submit any information you would like to include by 5:00 PM on the 15th of each month. Our Newsletter will be sent out the first week of each month.
All content must be relevant to Atlanta's arts and cultural community. See submission guidelines via the link below.
Newsletter Content Submission Form
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