Larry Walker: Thompson Award Winner of 2017

Larry Walker, Search Through Time, 2002–2004

The Georgia Museum of Art is pleased to present artist Larry Walker with the Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Award. The prize is given annually to an African American leader from Athens or northeast Georgia who has supported his or her community and the arts.

Walker is an esteemed professor emeritus and former director of the Ernest G. Welch School of Art and Design at Georgia State University. An artist and an educator born in Franklin, Georgia, he has participated in more than 200 group exhibitions and more than 40 solo exhibitions, which featured his abstract paintings, drawings and mixed-media works. One of his mixed-media works is on display in the Georgia Museum of Art’s permanent collection galleries. Walker is also a recipient of Atlanta Contemporary’s Nexus Award.

Shawnya Harris and artist Larry Walker

... the arts are about learning to live ...

At the awards ceremony, curator Shawnya Harris discussed Walker’s importance as an artist and a life-long educator before presenting him with the award in front of a sold-out crowd of more than 200 attendees. Walker then delivered remarks in which he addressed the power of art and said “the arts are about learning to live,” receiving a standing ovation.

Brenda and Larry Thompson

The Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Award is named for the couple who donated 100 works by African American artists from their collection to the museum and endowed a curatorial position (held by Shawnya L. Harris) to focus on art by African American and African artists. Larry Thompson teaches at the University of Georgia School of Law and is a UGA Foundation Trustee. Brenda Thompson is the chair-elect of the museum’s Board of Advisors. Previous recipients of the Thompson award include artists Emma Amos, Harold Rittenberry, Charles Pinckney and Amalia Amaki.

“Expanding Tradition: Selections from the Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Collection”

Mildred Thompson, Open Window Series V, 1977

Opening this Saturday, “Expanding Tradition: Selections from the Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Collection” is the highly anticipated showcase of over 50 works by artists in the Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Collection of African American Art and celebrates the inception of the Thompsons’ endowed curatorship, currently held by Dr. Shawnya L. Harris. “Expanding Tradition” builds upon the 2009 exhibition “Tradition Redefined: The Larry and Brenda Thompson Collection of African American Art,” organized by the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland, College Park.

In 2011, the Thompsons donated 100 works of art to the Georgia Museum of Art, and this exhibition provides an overview of certain aspects of the Thompsons’ commitment to art collecting over the last several decades, in tandem with discussions about the shifting artistic and political landscape for African American artists found in their collection. Artists include contemporary artists such as Willie Cole, Whitfield Lovell, Kevin Cole and Kara Walker as well as historical artists such as Elizabeth Catlett, Charles Sebree, Beauford Delaney and Benny Andrews. Rare Great Depression–era works by Norman Lewis, Charles White, Dox Thrash and Rose Piper will also be exhibited.

Left to right: Larry D. Thompson, Shawnya L. Harris and Brenda A. Thompson

“Expanding Tradition: Selections from the Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Collection” is on view from January 28 to May 7, 2017. The accompanying catalogue, published by the museum, features a statement of the history and meaning of their many years of collecting as well as a lead essay by Harris, which provides a detailed survey of the artists in the exhibition.

Related events include:

90 Carlton: Winter, the museum’s quarterly reception (free for members of the Friends of the Georgia Museum of Art, $5 non-members)
Friday, February 10 at 5:30 p.m.

Tour at Two with curator Shawnya Harris
Wednesday, February 15 at 2 p.m.

“Conversation on Collecting,” a discussion with the Thompsons and Curlee Raven Holton, executive director of the David C. Driskell Center
Thursday, February 23 at 5:30 p.m.

Black History Month Dinner ($55 members, $75 nonmembers)
Friday, February 24 at 6 p.m.

“Artful Conversation,” hosted in the galleries by assistant curator of education Sage Kincaid
Wednesday, March 22 at 2 p.m.

Artists’ Panel Discussion
Thursday, March 23, time TBA

Family Day
Saturday, April 15, 10 a.m. to noon

All events are free and open to the public unless otherwise indicated.

Tradition Redefined: Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson

Last month, we introduced Shawnya Harris, our new Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Curator of African American and African Diasporic Art. Harris’s position on our curatorial staff was funded by an endowment by Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson, generous donors who have created a lasting legacy here at the museum. This week, we celebrate the Thompsons for their contributions to the education and cultural enrichment of the museum and its community.

Tradition Redefined: Brenda A. and Larry D. Thompson

In 2011, the Thompsons donated 100 works to the Georgia Museum of Art from their private collection of pieces by African American artists. This initial donation echoes the donation by the museum's founder, Alfred Heber Holbrook, who donated 100 American paintings to the people of Georgia in 1945. The Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Collection of African American Art includes paintings, prints and sculpture from the 1890s to present, some of which are on view now in the permanent collection wing at the museum. An upcoming exhibition in early 2017 will feature selections from the Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Collection and highlight additional works by important, yet underrecognized African American artists. In addition, this exhibition will celebrate the inception of the Thompsons’ endowed curatorship. According to museum director William U. Eiland, the Thompsons "have quite simply changed the course of this museum. In effect, the Thompson endowment and the gift of their collection guarantees the ongoing study and exposure of African American artists in Georgia for posterity."

Radcliffe Bailey, 7 Steps (1994). From the Larry D. and

Brenda A. Thompson Collection of African American Art.

On view at the Georgia Museum of Art.

On February 26, the museum will present the Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Award, named in their honor, at its annual Black History Month awards dinner. The award recognizes a living African American visual artist with a significant Georgia connection. This year's winner is artist Emma Amos. To purchase tickets for the dinner or to become a sponsor, click here.

About Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson: Both Larry and Brenda Thompson have significant ties to the University of Georgia and the museum. Larry joined Georgia Law in 2011 as the John A. Sibley Professor in Corporate and Business Law. Having served as former deputy attorney general for the United States and former senior vice president of government affairs, general counsel and secretary for PepsiCo., he now teaches about corporate law and white-collar crime. Previously, he was a partner in the Atlanta office of King & Spalding and served as the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, where he directed the Southern Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force and was a member of the Attorney General’s Economic Crime Council. Brenda, a member of the museum’s board of advisors, received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Saint Louis University in 1980. She was an assistant professor at Morehouse College in the department of psychology before focusing on child and adolescent mental health, first as a clinical psychologist and then as a school psychologist. A longtime patron and leader in the arts, she also serves on the board of trustees for the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia and for the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Samantha Meyer and Madison Bledsoe contributed to this post.

Artist Spotlight: Henry Ossawa Tanner

Henry Ossawa Tanner, Still Life With Apples (1890)

Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859–1937), an African American artist, was known internationally for his paintings that focus on spirituality and imagination. The son of a minister, Tanner often depicted biblical scenes, utilizing both his academic training and what he saw on his visits to the Middle East and Africa.

Tanner was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, before the American Civil War. He enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) in 1879, where he studied under Thomas Eakins. After Tanner made his debut in New York and opened an art studio in Philadelphia, he moved to Atlanta in 1889, initially to open a photography studio. His business was unsuccessful, but he later taught a course in drawing at Clark College (Clark Atlanta University). He would move to Paris the next year, due to racial discrimination in the United States. Tanner enrolled in the Academie Julian in Paris in 1891, studying under Benjamin Constant and Jean-Paul Laurens. He developed a looser, more poetic painting style in 1900, with which he rendered his travels around the world (Egypt, Algiers, Morocco, Jerusalem, etc.). Tanner made these journeys so that he could portray biblical figures and settings accurately.

The artist’s involvement in World War I and his wife’s death, in 1925, led him toward depression and altered his perspective on art in his later years. He would create less work that focused on biblical themes and more paintings of the war and portraits of African Americans such as Booker T. Washington; these later paintings stayed in his private collection. Tanner’s influence on other artists, especially African Americans, was notable, and he received many awards over the course of his life.

The Georgia Museum of Art owns a painting by Tanner, “Still Life with Apples” (1890), donated to its collection by Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson (along with other works of art by African Americans). Created before Tanner left the United States, it uses dark colors in the background to emphasize the light on the apples in the foreground. Other works by Tanner are in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Des Moines Art Center; the Cincinnati Art Museum; PAFA and many more.

Tradition Redefined

When the Georgia Museum of Art first opened its doors after construction of the new additions and renovations to the facility, one of the first exhibitions to grace our halls was “Tradition Redefined: The Larry and Brenda Thompson Collection of African American Art.”

Initially, the collection was a travelling exhibition from a private collection and organized by the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of Visual Arts and Culture of African American and the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland, College Park. “Tradition Redefined” comprises 72 works dating from 2007 back to the 1890s. The 67 artists, both celebrated and regional, who produced these paintings and sculptures were picked by the Thompsons for their “untraditional” narratives and conventions of presenting African American art and the African American diaspora. Little did we know, however, that the exhibition would become a prized component of our permanent collection.

Radcliffe Bailey

The Thompsons generously donated their collection to the museum in 2011, during the 50th-anniversary celebration of the University of Georgia’s desegregation, as well as providing the financial support to create a new curatorial position at the museum: the Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Curator of the African Diaspora. This curator will oversee the museum’s collection of paintings, sculptures, and other artistic media by African and African American artists as well as being an adjunct faculty member of the Lamar Dodd School of Art. This is not the first time the Thompsons participated in the museum’s and the university’s academic affairs. Larry, as a former U.S. deputy attorney general, has spoken numerous times at the university since 2001, and taught for a brief time at UGA’s law school as the John A. Sibley Professor in Corporate and Business Law before being recalled to PepsiCo. Brenda currently serves on the Board of Trustees for the Barnes Foundation and the Board of the Clark Atlanta University Art Galleries. She also joined the museum’s Board of Advisors in 2011. Obviously, it would be a gross understatement to say that the Thompsons value education.

Stephanie Jackson

The collection itself has given more variety and depth to the museum’s new galleries, but for the moment it has moved on from GMOA. An exhibition such as this one should be shared with as many people as possible, and “Tradition Redefined” is currently on display at the Rice University Art Gallery in Houston, Texas, as part of the university’s centennial celebration, where it will be until Nov. 18. Along with 15 other commemorative exhibitions around Rice, “Tradition Redefined” will help highlight and celebrate the 100 years of change that transformed Rice from a small university close to the middle of nowhere to an international and educational success. After that, the collection will travel to Knoxville, Tenn., to be featured in the Knoxville Museum of Art April 11 through June 16, 2013.

If you have the opportunity to see "Tradition Redefined" at Rice, the Knoxville Museum of Art or elsewhere on the road, we hope you stop by and take a look at it, as well as at any of our other travelling exhibitions on tour. As part of our mission, GMOA supports and promotes the spread of the visual arts as tools of education, but it is up to our patrons, both near and far, to use them.