MFA

One thing we really will miss about not having a building in which to show art for the next two years is the annual MFA exit show, which has been held at the museum since Lamar Dodd was running the art school and Alfred Holbrook was director of GMOA. It's been a great opportunity for those artists to learn how a museum works from the inside out, as they work with museum staff from start to finish on installation, labels, publicity, planning the opening reception and more. But the academic calendar goes on, so this year's crop of MFA students will have their exhibition at the new Dodd building, with an opening reception next Friday, April 3, from 6 to 9 p.m. The image above is one of Wes Airgood's, a jewelry and metalwork artist in the MFA program who contributed work to The Ring Shows: Then & Now and Putting the Band Back Together, an exhibition on view at the museum in August 2008. The MFA students have put together a website that links to all of their individual sites and looks to both the future and the past.

Across the hall from us, in our current GMOA North location, is the first-year MFAs show, titled Our Darlings, which gives a neat look at what's to come, including the giant flower pictured below, by Denton Crawford, which takes up about six feet of wall. It'll be down any day now, if it's not already.