Atlanta’s unfinished cultural vision: Update city’s civic arts infrastructure

In 1962, a group of Atlanta’s civic, business and cultural leaders traveled to Europe with a shared belief that art and culture were not luxuries, but essential infrastructure for a world-class city.

Their journey through England, Italy and France was deliberate. They toured cultural sites studying how cities told their stories, invested in beauty and built civic pride through the arts. The goal: return to Atlanta inspired and advocate for a more vibrant, globally resonant cultural landscape at home.

They never made it back.

Moments after takeoff on their return flight, the plane crashed at Orly Airport in France. Atlanta was plunged into grief. The city mourned not only the 112 lives lost, but also the futures they were working to imagine. Out of that tragedy came resolve and generosity, culminating in the creation of what would become the Woodruff Arts Center, made possible in large part through a gift from Robert Woodruff.

It was a monumental response. It was also, in many ways, incomplete.

Insufficient investment in Black cultural institutions

Fahamu Pecou is the founder of the Africa Diaspora Art Museum of Atlanta. (Courtesy)

Atlanta cannot thrive on retrospection alone. Culture must do more than commemorate what we survived. It must help us imagine who we are, and who we might yet become.

Great cities understand that arts and culture are civic engines driving economic vitality, global relevance and shared identity. Too often, however, Atlanta is so practiced at rising from its ashes that it hesitates to fully imagine what could be.

That same reactive posture has shaped how Black culture is publicly framed across the city and the South. Although histories of enslavement, segregation and resistance must be preserved, they too often become the dominant lens through which Black life is understood. What gets lost is not memory, but imagination.

For decades, Atlanta has positioned itself as a global center of Black culture and influence. Yet the city still lacks a civic-scale institution dedicated to contemporary African Diasporic art. This absence reflects a structural gap in how Black creativity is supported in public life.

Atlanta cannot thrive on retrospection alone. Culture must do more than commemorate what we survived. It must help us imagine who we are, and who we might yet become.

Great cities understand that arts and culture are civic engines driving economic vitality, global relevance and shared identity. Too often, however, Atlanta is so practiced at rising from its ashes that it hesitates to fully imagine what could be.

That same reactive posture has shaped how Black culture is publicly framed across the city and the South. Although histories of enslavement, segregation and resistance must be preserved, they too often become the dominant lens through which Black life is understood. What gets lost is not memory, but imagination.

For decades, Atlanta has positioned itself as a global center of Black culture and influence. Yet the city still lacks a civic-scale institution dedicated to contemporary African Diasporic art. This absence reflects a structural gap in how Black creativity is supported in public life.

Atlanta has never lacked Black cultural institutions, but insufficient investment has limited their ability to grow alongside the city. The African Diaspora Art Museum of Atlanta was founded to fill this gap, and it’s why our next chapter matters not only to the arts community but also to the future of the city itself.

Atlanta has shown it can build differently.

Atlanta must update its cultural infrastructure

Under Mayor Maynard Jackson Jr., arts and culture were treated as civic infrastructure rather than discretionary amenities. His administration embedded arts support within city government, expanded public funding, enacted a 1%-for-art ordinance, and used federal employment dollars to put artists and cultural workers on the city’s payroll. Arts funding was not charity. It was policy, and it worked.

Yet Atlanta has not meaningfully updated that infrastructure to reflect the scale, complexity and global reach of Black cultural production today.

Recently, Mayor Andre Dickens declared Atlanta the “gateway to Africa.” If Atlanta is to take that claim seriously, it must also take responsibility for the cultural infrastructure such a role demands.

This is why ADAMA matters.

Since its founding in 2018, ADAMA has connected Atlanta audiences with contemporary African and African Diasporic artists, situating Atlanta within a dynamic, global discourse around Black art. We have done this work without permanent, civic-scale infrastructure or sustained institutional capital. That constraint has not diminished the impact, but it has defined the limits. ADAMA’s record shows what becomes possible when investment begins, even modestly, to align with ambition.

ADAMA began as a virtual space but was never intended to remain a museum without walls. With intention, we established our current home in the Pittsburgh neighborhood. The next chapter is the creation of a purpose-built, publicly accessible museum: a global destination where contemporary African Diasporic art can be exhibited, studied, debated and imagined at scale.

What will Atlanta’s arts legacy be in the end?

Projects of this magnitude do not advance through vision alone. They require alignment across city leadership, philanthropy, corporate capital and community. This is not a request for symbolic endorsement. It is a call for shared responsibility.

The cost of building will be measured in millions.

The cost of not building will be measured in relevance.