Art Adventures Begin Again at Georgia Museum of Art

The Georgia Museum of Art hosts a number of educational programs throughout the year.

With summer arriving, Art Adventures is returning to the Georgia Museum of Art. This free, interactive educational program is designed for elementary school-aged children, and will run from June 6 to July 26 with time slots available on Wednesdays and Thursdays. This program is ideal for groups such as day camps, day care centers and community centers, with slots available both in the morning and afternoon.

This year’s adventure will be “Elements of Art in the Georgia Museum of Art Permanent Collection.” During each 90-minute session, groups will enjoy a gallery tour, games and an art activity to help connect the students to what they have learned.

During the tour of our galleries, interactive stops will explore the elements of art (color, line, shape, frames and form). These stops will teach students about a variety of topics, including how paint is made, two- and three-dimensional works of art and how shapes come together to form a composition.

The tour will feature impressionist, modernist and contemporary works of art from artists such as Georgia O’Keeffe, Theodore Robinson, Beverly Buchanan, Radcliffe Bailey and more.

After the interactive gallery walk, the group will then create their own art to display in their classroom or community center. For this summer’s adventure, students will have the opportunity to mix their own paint and then use it to combine all of the elements of art they have just learned about. They will discover how their own work of art combines all of the elements of art at once.

Registration is currently open for this activity. Each session can accommodate up to 30 children, with one chaperone for every 10 kids. To schedule your group’s adventure or to learn more about Art Adventures, contact Sage Kincaid at sagekincaid@uga.edu or 706.542.0448.

Museum Prepares for a Busy Summer Season

Preparator Robert Russell helps to install "Bloom Where You're Planted"

With Memorial Day just around the corner, summer has officially arrived. The Georgia Museum of Art has several events and exhibitions planned over the next few months to help everyone in Athens enjoy their summer. Visitors can escape the heat and come spend the day at the museum, where they’ll find a collection that suits a wide range of interests. We’ll also participate in the National Endowment for the Arts’ Blue Star Museums program once again, which runs from Memorial Day through Labor Day. This program offers free admission to active-duty military personnel and their families. As we already have free admission for everyone, we’re extending a 10 percent discount in the Museum Shop to those folks.

Upcoming Exhibitions

The museum has a few exciting new exhibitions this summer, which are diverse in content and offer three distinct collections. This past Friday, “Bloom Where You’re Planted: The Collection of Deen Day Sanders” opened, highlighting one of the most important Georgia-based collections of American art. The exhibition will be on view until July 29, and features a wide range of art including porcelain, paintings and furniture.

On June 30, “Central to Their Lives: Southern Women Artists in the Johnson Collection” will open, allowing visitors to view art spanning the decades between the late 1890s and early 1960s. This show will examine the challenges these artists faced in the traditionally conservative region during a period of change for women in the social, cultural and political spheres. The show will be on view until September 23.

Beginning July 21, “One Heart, One Way: The Journey of a Princely Art Collection” will debut, introducing a collection of Russian fine and decorative arts from ca. 1660 to 1952 to the public. With a storied past and long journey, this exhibition announces the survival of paintings that had been thought lost and the existence of other highly significant, hitherto unknown works of art belonging to the same collection. This show will run until January 6, 2019.

To see a list of all of our current and upcoming exhibitions, please see our website.

Summer Events

In addition to our upcoming exhibitions, the museum is also offering a number of free events open to the public all summer long. Next Thursday, May 31, at 7 p.m., our Museums on Film series kicks off with “Night at the Museum.” Other films in the series include “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” on June 7 and “The Thomas Crown Affair” on June 14.

We will also be hosting a number of Family Day events and Toddler Tuesdays. Family Day is a great chance for kids of all ages to create their own art after viewing works from our collections. Toddler Tuesday is a free, 40-minute program designed for families with children ages 18 months to 3 years. This program includes a tour, story time in the galleries and an art activity just for the little ones.

Finally, our next Museum Mix party will be on June 28 from 8 – 11 p.m. This late-night event will feature a live DJ (Kurt Wood this time) and free refreshments for all visitors.

For a full list of all of our events, you can view our calendar, and we look forward to seeing you this summer at the museum!

Former Intern Samantha Meyer Reflects on Her Time at the Museum

Samantha Meyer

One of our former public relations interns, Samantha Meyer, recently took the time to write about how her internship with the Georgia Museum of Art helped her find her ideal career path. Meyer is currently the lead career consultant for the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia.

During my time as a student at the University of Georgia, I worked as a public relations intern for the Georgia Museum of Art. I was thrilled to land this role and learn more about my chosen major and career path in the context of art in the Athens community. I was excited to learn about the basics of PR—how to write a press release, practicing my writing skills and generally learning how to communicate effectively on behalf of an organization. I had no idea that I would learn so much more about my future career path and myself.

One of my favorite things about working at the museum was that I was trusted to do the work I was assigned. I was responsible for touching base with curators about upcoming exhibitions for the advance exhibition schedule, and I managed the process of tracking press clippings. I was also writing press releases frequently—and about some major initiatives, at that. I mean, I wrote a release about Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! initiative, y’all!

As intimidating as that all may have sounded to me at the time, I learned that I love autonomy in any role I assume; I will always appreciate the trust that was put into me during my time as a public relations intern.

In addition, I learned how to carry myself in an office setting. As a first generation college student, I didn’t understand the importance of this. The museum was a wonderful learning environment as I processed how to collaborate with peers and superiors, how to take constructive criticism and simply how to work effectively within an organization.

An unexpected outcome of my time at the museum was learning how much I enjoyed working in higher education. Working at the Georgia Museum of Art taught me that there were ways to apply my communications experience in support of causes and organizations that make an impact on their communities and stand for something meaningful. I realized that I couldn’t work for an organization whose mission and impact I didn’t support. As a double major in public relations and women’s studies, coupled with my time at the museum, I realized my values would play a huge role in my career—something that I was unable to foresee early on in my time at UGA.

Nowadays, it’s my job to help current University of Georgia students figure out what they want to do with their careers. One of the first things we encourage at the UGA Career Center is to get experience (such as internships) to help them learn what they might want to do. I encourage starting out in campus roles (and have even recommended GMOA before!) so students can begin learning what they like, what they don’t like, and what they want more of in future roles. Though I’m no longer working in the art world, there was no better setting for me to gain experience for my future career than the Georgia Museum of Art.

For more information on our internship opportunities, you can read about our various positions here or fill out an application.

A Legacy of Giving: Mary Virginia Terry

Mary Virginia Terry

Mary Virginia and her late husband C. Herman Terry are among the most generous donors in the history of the University of Georgia.

Its business school bears their name, as it has since 1991, but they have also supported faculty chairs, the general scholarship fund at the university and the College of Pharmacy. Their legacy continues through Mrs. Terry’s latest gift: 14 paintings and works on paper to the collection of the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia.

Throughout her life, Mrs. Terry has focused her philanthropy on three areas: education, children’s charities and the arts. She has been a trustee of Jacksonville University and served on the boards of the Wolfson Children’s Hospital, the Children’s Home Society, the Salvation Army, the Sulzbacher Center for the Homeless and the Jacksonville Symphony. Mr. Terry graduated from what was then UGA’s school of commerce in 1939, then became president of Dependable Insurance Co., which he built into a major corporation in Jacksonville, Florida, where the couple made their home. He passed away in 1998, but Mrs. Terry has continued the legacy of giving that they began together. She received an honorary doctoral degree from the University of Georgia in 2009 and served recently as honorary chair of the very successful Building Terry campaign at UGA’s Terry College of Business.

A native of Quitman, Georgia, and a graduate of Valdosta State University, Mary Virginia Terry understands the impact that art can make on children’s lives and the way that it can provide UGA students with a well-rounded experience. She and her husband built their collection of art together, and these 14 works greatly increase the museum’s holdings by the major artists who created them.

It would be rare and marvelous to receive a gift of a single work by Childe Hassam, John Henry Twachtman, Maurice Prendergast, Andrew Wyeth, Ernest Lawson, Winslow Homer, Gifford Beal or John Singer Sargent. To receive works by all of these artists at once, in a single gift, is extraordinary. Until Mrs. Terry made her gift, the museum did not own a painting by Sargent, only a drawing. Not only are the works beautiful and important, but they also fill some gaps in its collection, allowing UGA students and the wider Athens-area community to benefit from seeing these works in person. All 14 works will be on display at the museum this spring, in the exhibition “A Legacy of Giving: C. Herman and Mary Virginia Terry,” on view May 12 through August 5.

William U. Eiland visited Mrs. Terry several times over the years of his tenure as director of the museum and said, of this extraordinary gift, “My reaction at hearing from Mrs. Terry that she was making this gift to the museum? Joy. Unaffected, pure joy. And gratefulness, on behalf of generations of students yet to enroll at the university.”

Mary Virginia Terry has said, “My husband and I just felt we wanted to give back because we had such good fortune.” They chose to focus on the arts, hospitals, education and children’s concerns because, “We felt those were important both for the future and for the needs we saw now.” Mrs. Terry is a modest person, who does not love the spotlight, but she accepts public recognition in the hope that her giving will serve as an example to others. For more than half a century, she has provided support to the University of Georgia that has helped it strengthen academic and research programs. The museum is proud and grateful to be among the beneficiaries of their kindness.