Savannah steals a little thunder this fall with the opening of a major showcase for African-American art, but Atlanta doesn't lack for big cultural events of its own. Here's a quick sampling:
- The Walter O. Evans Center for African American Studies, adding an exemplary collection of African-American art collected by the retired Savannah surgeon to Savannah College of Art and Design's SCAD Museum of Art, is slated to open Oct. 29.
The Evans Center is a large part of a 65,000-square-foot expansion (including exhibition, educational and programming space) to the museum complex at 601 Turner Blvd. downtown. The Evans collection includes prime examples by Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, Margaret Burroughs and Richard Hunt.
In addition to selections from its permanent collections, SCAD Museum also will open with solo exhibitions by video artist Bill Viola; Liza Lou, who creates glass-bead covered sculpture installations; and installation artist Kendall Buster (all continuing through January). Designed by the Savannah architecture firm Sottile & Sottile, the expansion also will add the André Leon Talley Gallery, featuring 20th and 21st-century fashion and style. www.scad.edu/museum.
- Fall is a great time for festivals in the Southeast, and folksy ones always seem to be popular, perhaps because we start feeling like folks again after summer's dog days. Two upcoming, family-friendly ones -- the Atlanta History Center's Fall Folklife Festival and the Folk Life Festival and Folk Pottery Sale at the Sautee Nacoochee Center's Folk Pottery Museum of Northeast Georgia, near Helen -- sound particularly promising.
The History Center's folklife fest on Sept. 10 broadens beyond the expected crafts demonstrations, hands-on activities and market to include presentations and activities on environmental sustainability (such as local chefs and farmers as discussing farm-to-table food practices). Live bluegrass, folk and blues music provides the soundtrack, and there will be prepared seasonal foods for sale. The featured speaker is Charles Salter, discussing his book, "The Georgia Rambler: A Potter's Snake, the Real Thing Recipe, a Satilla Adventure and More."404-814-4000, www.atlantahistorycenter.com/folklife.
The Folk Pottery Museum's festival, Sept. 3, will show how native American, European and African-American cultures shaped the heritage of the Sautee and Nacoochee valleys in Northeast Georgia. Demonstrations will range, respectively, from flint-knapping to rifle-building to gourd banjo-making, and there will be interpretive tours of a restored 1850s slave cabin. More than a dozen folk potters will demonstrate and sell their work. A dinner concert commemorating the Civil War's 150th anniversary will feature a traditional dinner of pork loin, greens and black-eyed peas, with a music menu of Civil War-era songs performed by Yonah Brass and vocalists. 706-878-3300, www.folkpotterymuseum.com.
- The picture of Charles Darwin continues to evolve nearly 150 years after he published "The Origin of Species," his theory of evolution by natural selection that remains the central concept underlying modern biology. Starting Sept. 24, the Fernbank Museum of Natural History hosts "Darwin," billed as the most in-depth exhibition ever mounted on the English naturalist.
An array of fossils, mounted specimens and collections of beetles, butterflies and moths suggest the arresting diversity Darwin encountered in his travels around the world during five years aboard the HMS Beagle. A 5-foot-long iguana and several frogs add a live dimension to the American Museum of Natural History-organized show, which continues through Jan. 1.
"Galapagos," an Imax movie on one of Darwin's richest places of study, opens Sept 2. 404-929-6300, www.fernbankmuseum.org.
- JapanFest, the largest Japanese cultural festival in the Southeast, marks its 25th edition on Sept. 17-18 at the Convention Center at Gwinnett Center in Duluth. The attractions include a concert by Grammy-winning koto player Yukiko Matsuyama, classical and modern Japanese dance performances, martial arts demonstrations, the Ginza-dori shopping arcade and metro Japanese restaurants serving up a menu of sushi, bento boxes, ramen noodles, fried octopus and more yummy for the tummy. www.japanfest.org.
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