Autumn isn’t just a busy art-world season for New York City: True to its climate, Atlanta is blazing forward with stellar exhibitions across the city and debuting its first art fair. Despite being home to an abundance of exceptional artists, exhibitions, and institutions, the city rarely receives attention from the mainstream art world — an unfortunate reality that is finally beginning to change. During the inaugural Atlanta Art Fair, dozens of galleries from local, national, and international origins will draw visitors for a celebration of Southern artists and creativity. In anticipation of the art fair, institutions across the city and surrounding area are opening dazzling satellite exhibitions featuring the likes of Jeffrey Gibson and Ming Smith, showcasing their artistic might. All this amounts to a fever-pitch season with a bounty of art to see. Visitors should wear breathable clothing and plan to spend multiple days here; you don’t want to miss a thing.
The Atlanta Art Fair
Pullman Yards, 225 Rogers Street NE, Kirkwood, Georgia
October 3–6
The inaugural Atlanta Art Fair marks a new chapter in the city’s development. Although we’re frequently the source of exceptional talent, the flow of exhibitions and individual artists usually runs outward, away from the city to more established art hubs like New York and Los Angeles. This fair, acting as a corrective of sorts, is dedicated to bringing talent to Atlanta and supporting local artists. The fair is slated to feature booths from over 60 galleries, museums, and nonprofits, such as Hawkins Headquarters in Atlanta; Scott Miller Projects in Birmingham, Alabama; and Spence Gallery in Toronto. In addition to the booths on view at the historic Pullman Yards complex, concomitant programming around the city extends and enhances the fair’s presence. Projects such as Heritage in Focus presented by Dashboard, the Atlanta Center for Photography’s 2024 Gala, and the Goat Farm Art Center’s SITE event on October 5 will offer fair visitors a chance to explore other corners of the city.
José Ibarra Rizo: Cultivate
Wolfgang Gallery, 1240 Old Chattahoochee Avenue NW, Suite H, Atlanta, Georgia
Through October 26
In Cultivate, renowned documentary photographer José Ibarra Rizo explores the ways in which Mexican-American people occupy space and land. Whether at work, at play, or at rest, the figures captured by Rizo’s lens are always tethered to the earth upon which they stand. Often depicting migrant workers in the field, Rizo’s photographs are a humanizing force contesting efforts to villainize immigrant communities.
Cosmo Whyte: The Sea Urchin Can’t Swim: Tales from the Edge of a World
Johnson Lowe Gallery, 764 Miami Circle NE, Suite 210, Buckhead, Georgia
October 4–November 23
Despite his current residence in Los Angeles, Whyte has a long history of engaging with the American South and the Caribbean. Born in St. Andrews, Jamaica, and living long stints in Georgia and Florida, Whyte has made an entire region his home. In this exhibition, the artist explores the collision of customs as a migrant traverses different cultures. Navigating the morally questionable maritime practice of flags of convenience, Whyte mines the perils of personal history while exalting its potential for transformation.
Ming Smith: Feeling the Future
Spelman Museum of Fine Art, 350 Spelman Lane SW, Atlanta, Georgia
Through December 7
The first major career-spanning museum exhibition of the artist also marks her first solo show in Atlanta and at a historically Black college. Feeling the Future emphasizes Smith’s masterful experimentation with lens-based media. Many of the artworks feel improvisational, featuring cropped objects, figures in motion, and low lighting. Gritty film and muted colors further cast a shroud over the tenebrous scenes. Despite their often decades-old age, the photographs feel like a clear precursor to off-the-cuff photography, ubiquitous today due to the widespread access to cameras. Identifiable figures, such as Sun Ra, are often the only elements providing the images with a timestamp. In this exhibition, Smith conjures the future by smothering definition.
Jeffrey Gibson: They Teach Love
The Bernard A. Zuckerman Museum of Art at Kennesaw State University, 492 Prillaman Way, Kennesaw, Georgia
Through December 7
Jeffrey Gibson, who became the first Native artist to present a solo show at the United States pavilion at the Venice Biennale this year, has strong ties to the South that are often overlooked. Of Mississippi Choctaw and Cherokee heritage, the artist combines motifs of Indigenous art and culture with modernist traditions. A central artwork within They Teach Love is a multipronged performance. Presented on a video screen in the gallery, the initial clip featuring Gibson is flanked by ephemera created for the performance’s execution. Robes strung across rods and deerskin drums hung in evenly spaced rows from floor to ceiling display short affirmations written out in super-saturated paint. These messages, which range in tone from serious to whimsical, plaster the gallery and overwhelm it with their sheer volume.
Matt Eich: We, the Free
Atlanta Center for Photography, 546 Edgewood Avenue SE, Atlanta, Georgia
Through December 21
From 2006 to 2018, Eich created a body of work titled We, the Free that documents the vastness of the American psyche under late capitalism. Presented at the Atlanta Center for Photography is a distilled selection of works from the titular series, documenting the complex ethos of a superpower in decline. Occupying the jewel-box gallery space on Edgewood Avenue, the exhibition presents photographs attempting to answer the question: How did we reach the point of no return?
Patterns in Abstraction: Black Quilts from the High’s Collection
High Museum of Art, 1280 Peachtree Street NE, Atlanta, Georgia
Through January 5, 2025
Abstract painting and quilts have often been conflated due to their formal similarities, but this group of Black quilters refutes that relationship. In March of 2023, the High Museum organized a convening of quilters, scholars, and curators to answer the question: “How can quilts made by Black women change the way we tell the story of abstract art?” This convening resulted in, among other things, the exhibition currently on view at the High. Drawing exclusively from the museum’s collection, the show is packed with masterpieces. Stunning displays of patterning, experimentation, composition, and technique hang on every wall in the gallery. Notably, the museum also recorded, filmed, and published conversations from the 2023 convening alongside a wealth of other digital resources. In this way, the oral traditions that are embedded within the quilts are given equal importance as the artworks themselves.
