If there was one thing that stood out on the 2014 art scene it was the number of engaging and ambitious shows mounted at the High Museum. As the most well-financed, visible venue in town, the High has often relied on blockbuster, traveling shows with name recognition designed to draw the largest audience possible, with less regard for enlightening or challenging that audience.
But in 2014 the High showed a shift in focus, embracing an array of provocative artists who weren’t necessarily household names. The institution managed to strike a successful balance between blockbusters (the delightful “Dream Cars”) and more demanding contemporary shows (Janet Cardiff’s “Forty Part Motet”). Under the helm of photography curator Brett Abbott, the High’s photography program continued to impress, with a slate of shows from under-the-radar American masters including Gordon Parks, Abelardo Morell and Wynn Bullock. The High seemed to finally get it: the need to engage, educate and connect to a changing, increasingly sophisticated city.
At Atlanta’s smaller museums and galleries one of the ongoing themes of exhibitions in 2014 was a contemplative, deeply personal survey of the past. Perhaps the more the world and media seem to speed up, artists feel the need to sift through and understand what has come before.
Some favorite shows this year include:
“Scarlet Air: Works by Micah and Whitney Stansell,” Whitespace Gallery
The talented Atlanta couple proved their skills are amplified when they work together. This compelling exhibition of video stills and an ambitious multi-channel video work combined Micah’s grandiose ambitions and Whitney’s humanistic streak in this lovely, deeply felt show about life’s moments of doubt and quiet joys.
“The Forty Part Motet” by Janet Cardiff, High Museum
If any one exhibition demonstrated the High’s taste for adventure in 2014 it was its sensational showcasing of this Canadian artist’s most famous work, a soul-stirring, transcendent sound installation that deconstructs a 16th century choral work by Thomas Tallis. Cardiff’s thoughtful, joyous work revealed the sculptural potential of sound and suggested the possibility of more great things to come from the High.
“Abelardo Morell: The Universe Next Door,” High Museum
A joyful sense of discovery and play characterized this moving show of photographs by Cuban-born photographer Morell. “The Universe Next Door” featured more than 100 photographs that build to a compelling affirmation of Morell’s singular point of view and lifelong fascination with looking deeply at the world and marveling at its magic.
“Thomas Hart Benton, Lonesome Road: Works From the Estate,” Alan Avery Art Company
An exhibition of prints and drawings from this quintessential American regionalist tackled race and African-American subjects, enlarging our understanding of Benton’s depths of empathy. “I think it is interesting that a white man of his time really captured the soul of a black man having to work and deal with society at the time” Avery told the AJC.
“Encyclopaedia: A Compendium of Modernity” by Jason Kofke, Kai Lin Art
There were several notable shows at Kai Lin Art this year featuring talented locals including Ashley Schick and Kent Knowles. In “Encyclopaedia,” Kofke contemplated the more fixed and definitive cataloguing of the past in outdated tomes like the World Book encyclopedias before the dawn of the Internet.
“Be Here Now: Mike Black, Andrew Boatright, Sandra Erbacher,” Atlanta Contemporary Art Center
Though former curator Stuart Horodner often used this space as a one-note shop window for his own aesthetic sensibility, in this group show the artists were allowed to shine. “Be Here Now” focused on ordinary materials re-imagined most compellingly in the deft hands of Atlantans Mike Black and Andrew Boatright.
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