Athens, Ga. – “Pictures of Us: Photographs from The Do Good Fund Collection,” an exhibition currently on display in six venues on the University of Georgia campus and in the Athens community, will be the focal point for a series of public events this February.
The Do Good Fund is a public charity based in Columbus, Georgia, that focuses on building a museum-quality collection of contemporary Southern photography, including works by emerging photographers. It encourages complementary, community-based programming to accompany each exhibition.
The multi-venue exhibition, part of the Global Georgia Initiative of the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, brings dozens of photographs from the collection of The Do Good Fund to Athens and UGA.
William R. Ferris, a widely recognized leader in Southern studies, African-American music and folklore, is the former chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He will be the featured Global Georgia speaker Feb. 18 at 4 p.m. in the M. Smith Griffith Auditorium of the Georgia Museum of Art.
Ferris will speak on “The Storied South: Voices of Writers and Artists,” also the title of his 2013 book based on his interviews with 26 Southern luminaries including Alice Walker, William Eggleston and Eudora Welty. Ferris is the Joel R. Williamson Eminent Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the senior associate director of UNC’s Center for the Study of the American South. He has written or edited 10 books, created 15 documentary films and hosted for nearly a decade “Highway 61,” a weekly blues program on Mississippi Public Radio.
A public reception at the Lyndon House Arts Center for “Pictures of Us” and Ferris will be held following his talk from 6-8 p.m. It is being hosted by the Willson Center, the Do Good Fund and the Lyndon House.
The “Pictures of Us” exhibition venues are the Athens-Clarke County Library, curated by the Georgia Museum of Art; Ciné; the Lamar Dodd School of Art; the Lyndon House Arts Center; the Richard B. Russell Building Special Collections Libraries; and the Willson Center, curated by the UGA College of Environment and Design. A portfolio of Do Good Fund photographs is also featured in the winter issue of The Georgia Review. Details on all six exhibits and links to information about the events below are available at http://willson.uga.edu/event/pictures-of-us-photographs-from-the-do-good-fund-collection/.
Additional events include a free, two-part photography workshop for teens—organized by the Georgia Museum of Art—on Feb. 10 and 17 at 4:30 p.m. at the Athens-Clarke County Library. The workshop is part of the worldwide photography project “Inside Out,” in which communities display large portraits of underrepresented locals in public spaces.
The Russell Libraries will host a talk by photographer Billy Weeks, a two-time winner of the Gordon Parks International Photography Award, Feb. 16 at 2:30 p.m. The building’s exhibit is devoted to images from Parks’ seminal 1956 Life magazine photo essay documenting the state of segregation in the South.
The Lyndon House will host a pair of events on Feb. 19. A portfolio review for local photographers with Mark Steinmetz, Mike Smith and Baldwin Lee, all of whose work is represented in The Do Good Fund collection, is scheduled from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. At 3 p.m., Steinmetz, Smith and Lee will join photographer Jill Frank and Michael David Murphy, program manager of Atlanta Celebrates Photography, for a panel discussion moderated by Marni Shindelman, artist and lecturer in photography at the UGA Lamar Dodd School of Art.
The Global Georgia Initiative is a series of lectures and conversations whose goal is to present global problems in local context with a focus on how the arts and humanities can intervene. More information is available at http://willson.uga.edu/programs/public-programs/global-georgia-initiative/.