Exhibition Provides Extensive Look into Tsar Nicholas II’s Life

Portrait of Nicholas II

When asked to describe the Georgia Museum of Art’s newest exhibition, “The Reluctant Autocrat: Tsar Nicholas II,” head preparator Todd Rivers said that it stands out to him in two distinct ways. First, the show consists of “artifacts from all walks of Nicholas II’s life: birth, childhood, coronation and legacy,” he said. Rivers also noted the show is comprehensive in that it “encompasses almost every form of art including ceramics, lithographs, photographs, icons, medals, uniforms, paintings, jewelry, coins and more.”

The exhibition, which focuses on Alexander III and the final Russian emperor, Nicholas II, opens this Saturday, December 22. It is arranged in a logical, easy-to-follow design across five galleries for all visitors to enjoy, regardless of their level of background knowledge. “I love this show because it tells such a clear story,” preparator Elizabeth Howe said, “You get to see the same people, the same clothing and the same imagery across all of the different works, and you can easily recognize the narrative.”

For visitors who wish to gain a deeper understand of the show, however, Howe strongly recommends attending one of Asen Kirin’s tours. The Parker Curator of Russian Art has a detailed familiarity with not only the works of art, but also the subjects and events surrounding them.

Visitors can come to Kirin’s “Tour at Two” on January 23 at 2 p.m. should they want to witness this extensive knowledge firsthand. Other programs related to this exhibition include Elegant Salute XVI, 90 Carlton: Winter, Toddler Tuesday: Treasure Hunt and Family Day: Russian Embroidery.

The holiday season is in full swing, and this free exhibition is the perfect experience for both friends and families who are in Athens for a few days and locals who are looking for fun destinations this winter. The museum will be closed on December 25 and January 1, but will otherwise hold normal hours. “The Reluctant Autocrat: Tsar Nicholas II” will be on view December 22, 2018, through March 17, 2019.

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Taylor Lear

Department of Communications

Museum Staff Go “Down the Lane” to Steffen Thomas Museum

Peter Loose, Marilyn Estes and Bucky

Just over 45 minutes away from the Georgia Museum of Art and tucked into a landscape of green fields is the Steffen Thomas Museum in Buckhead, Georgia. Dedicated to Thomas’s immense collection, the museum houses sculpture, mosaics, furniture, paintings, metal works, prints, ceramics and more. The German-born artist emigrated to the United States in 1930 and built his career to much success until his death in 1990. 

On December 11, members of the Georgia Museum of Art staff were able to not only experience Thomas’s work for the first time, but also to view “The Great Folk Art Parade: Down the Lane to Steffen Thomas Museum of Art,” the largest exhibition of self-taught artists of the South in recent history. Joined by Lauren Fancher, Marilyn Estes (and Bucky the King Charles Spaniel), the small group was given a personal tour by the exhibition’s curator, Peter Loose, whose perspicacious knowledge on the artists and works shown was incredibly immense.  

Pointing to any of the 200+ works, the visitors were instantly met with specific, sometimes first-hand, stories of the artist’s background, technique or personality. From a large yellow painted lard can by Carter Lee Wellborn to “Dolly the Goat,” who was made from hundreds of recycled Barbie heads by Jim Shores, the exhibition was filled with vibrant, unique works from all over the South and beyond. 

Starting on the lawn of the museum and moving into a large gallery space, the show was filled with works from private collections, with many of the works for sale. Artists represented include Howard Finster, Jim Shores, Sam Granger, Clyde Jones and many more. 

The Steffen Thomas Museum is open Tuesday through Saturday 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. with an admission price of $5. “The Great Folk Art Parade” is on view through January 12, 2019. 

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Taylor Lear

Department of Communications

Historic Heartland Offers Visitors’ Guide to Georgia

Historic Heartland Travel Association

The Historic Heartland Travel Association had its monthly meeting on December 5, convening in Covington, Georgia, for its last gathering of the year. Held on the first Wednesday of every month, the meetings are meant to highlight the tourism units of cities throughout the state.

Michael Lachowski explained why he sees the organization as a worthwhile use of his time as public relations coordinator for the museum. He said, “The Historic Heartland Travel Association is one way that the museum is able to keep its role as a tourism attraction in the minds of tourism professionals in our region — because in their capacities in their local tourism offices or welcome centers, attractions or lodgings, these people have opportunities to assist travelers with recommendations for other places. Monthly meetings feature speakers on a variety of tourism topics. State tourism staff assist with the association and provide updates on activities and opportunities at the state level. This is a low-cost way for the museum to reiterate its role as the official state museum of art.”

The Historic Heartland Region of Georgia consists of cities from Athens and Watkinsville to Perry and Augusta. The association aims to help visitors explore the state of Georgia through various trails and local guides.

Athens, one of the most exciting cities in the region, is well represented throughout this association. Among other stops, the State Botanical Garden of Georgia, Lyndon House Arts Center and Georgia Theatre all top the list of ways to spend your days in town. The most recent meeting of the association boasted new highlights for the area, including Maepole’s opening, Condor Chocolate factory tours and 600 new hotel rooms opening in the downtown area.

And, of course, the Georgia Museum of Art is a must-see stop on the Athens program. With a world-class permanent collection and rotating temporary and traveling exhibitions, our free museum is a valuable asset to local Athens residents and visitors alike.

To learn more about the Historic Heartland’s official Athens recommendations, you can view its guide here.

Museum Busy Planning Elegant Salute XVI

Our team of committed volunteers is hard at work planning Elegant Salute XVI: An Imperial Evening, which will take place January 26, 2019. Held every other year, Elegant Salute is the museum’s single most important fundraiser, supplying crucial funds for educational programming and exhibitions that let us fulfill our mission to bring art to the people of our state.

This year’s gala takes the exhibition “The Reluctant Autocrat: Tsar Nicholas II” as its inspiration and is chaired by Sarah Kraft Peterson and Isobel “Ibby” Parker Mills. Parker Curator of Russian Art Asen Kirin is organizing the exhibition, which focuses on the last two Romanov rulers: Nicholas II and his father, Alexander III. Only the second dynasty to rule Russia, the House of Romanov maintained power for some 300 years, until the Russian Revolution, in 1917.

“The Reluctant Autocrat” will include many works from the Parker Collection at the museum (rare books, vintage photographs, elaborate silver objects, medals, portraits, militaria, porcelain and costumes) as well as supplementary objects from Bob Jones University Museum of Art and Gallery and from the promised gift of Marina Belosselsky-Belozersky Kasarda. Highly ornamented and rich with meaning, these works of fine and decorative art are already supplying the décor and flowers committee, headed up by past Elegant Salute chair Maggie Hancock, with plenty of ideas.

Ham Magill, Gordhan Patel and David Matheny are in charge of fundraising this time around, with a goal of $200,000 in sponsorships. We know you can help them get there. Devereux Burch is in charge of the social committee, Airee Edwards is chair of the after-party publicity committee, Bree Hayes is having fun planning the menu with her compatriots, Mike Landers is running the entertainment committee, Evelyn Dukes is once again ably handling logistics, and Maggie Hancock and Ligia Alexander are once again imagining exquisite decor and flowers.

The evening will begin with cocktails at 6, in a heated tent in the Jane and Harry Willson Sculpture Garden, followed by dinner in the M. Smith Griffith Grand Hall. Attendees will partake of a Russian-inspired meal, then return to the tent for the after-party: From Russia with Love. Guests can dance the evening away in a James Bond–themed environment while they enjoy dessert.

Tickets are $300 for members, $350 for nonmembers. Tickets to the after-party only are $50 for members, $65 for nonmembers and include entry to the after-party. Please call 706.542.0830 or visit bit.ly/elegant-salute-2019 for more information, to sponsor or to purchase tickets.

One-man Show Tackles the Sky

As an undergraduate student, Ted Kincaid disabled the light meter on his Polaroid camera. A longer shutter speed let him capture time in motion instead of static images. Kincaid has since focused his artistic practice on the exploration and exploitation of photography’s tug-of-war between reality and artistic truth. He uses digital media both to create manufactured “photographs” and to deconstruct and radically reorder segments of photograph into pure color and form. This second process forges the focus of “Even if I Lose Everything,” Kincaid’s first solo museum exhibition, which will be on view at the Georgia Museum of Art from November 17, 2018, to January 13, 2019.

"Hudson Valley Cloud 4617 (Inness)", 2017

“Even if I Lose Everything” features a series of abstracted skyscapes. Kincaid digitally dissects photographs (both his own and those by other artists) of skies, using their colors, forms and shapes to reinterpret and reconstruct reality. The name of the exhibition stems from Kincaid’s thought that “memory, as time progresses, tends to, bit by bit, be replaced by memories of the memory, rather than fact. At some point, many of our memories become entirely a new construct.” The result is a placid but potent meditation on the subjectivity of memory.

The fact that Kincaid’s exhibition links inner worlds to skies and clouds is no anomaly. Romantic painters’ ideal of the sublime merged fantasy and reality in the 19th century. Although these artists often painted landscapes or figures rooted in physical existence, they depicted their subject matter through the lens of personal experience. Within their works, clouds evoked ideas of divinity, emotion and transcendental experience.

"Thunderhead 81418", 2018

Georgia Museum of Art director and curator of the exhibition William U. Eiland sees this effect at the core of Kincaid’s work. “In Ted Kincaid’s studies of clouds we find intense interest not only in various scientific phenomena associated with them but also in a novel and technically challenging means by which to present them,” Eiland says. “I believe his inspiration in these glorious images of clouds lies in the words of Keats, Shelley, Wilde and Blake: they are equally as poetic.” Kincaid states that he sees his work as continuing the romantic tradition through subject matter and execution. He strives to unite digital photography and painting into a single, modern entity: “Neo-Romanticism, if you will,” he says.

Kincaid enjoys that, even though his aesthetics may shift across projects, the core idea is the same. This unique vision has earned him recognition in his home state of Texas and across the U.S. He has been reviewed in Artforum, Artpaper and Art on Paper, and his work is included in the permanent collections of the Dallas Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Museum of Fine Arts in San Antonio and the U.S. State Department and the Human Rights Campaign Headquarters in Washington, D.C. One of his large cyanotypes—a type of photographic image producing a white image on a cyan-blue background—is also on view at the Georgia Museum of Art, in its Barbara and Sanford Orkin Gallery.

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Penske McCormack

Intern, Department of Communications