Ninth Henry D. Green Symposium Illustrates the Value of an Expert

Robert Leath (second from left) receives the Henry D. Green Award for lifetime achievement in the decorative arts

If you need to know the value of an object, then you ask an expert. Janine E. Skerry can tell you the value of silver in the early American South. Alexandra Kirtley knows the price paid for porcelain in Philadelphia during the Revolutionary Era. And Luke Zipp could give you some advice on Savannah River Valley pottery in the Antebellum South. But how does one find out the value of an expert?

Simple, monetary measurements do not result in an accurate appraisal of worn hands and trained eyes. The reward of long nights consumed in research may not be silver and gold, but hard-earned conclusions after years of patient scholarship. Individuals who dedicate their time and energy to knowledge and then choose to share their knowledge are truly priceless.

Many of these such individuals, including Skerry, Kirtley and Zipp, found their way to the ninth Henry D. Green Symposium of the Decorative Arts, hosted by the Georgia Museum of Art this past weekend at the Classic Center. The event kicked off with a keynote lecture from Peter M. Kenny, titled "You Must Not Get Your Furniture Here . . . Get What You Want from N. York in the Spring." Scholars came from universities and museums all over the South to share their expertise, with novices and students welcomed at the event as well.

Ashley Callahan, Annelies Mondi, and Mary Pearse, curators of "Crafting History: Textiles, Metals and Ceramics at the University of Georgia"

This year, the theme of the symposium was “Belonging: Georgia and Region in the National Fabric.” The theme celebrated how research in the decorative arts weaves together scholars from diverse regional fields into one community. From Georgian rifles to Russian treasures, each scholar brings a unique perspective to the table. This interesting mix produced rich and profitable conversations all weekend long. Robert Leath, chief curator of the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, received the Henry D. Green Award for lifetime achievement in the decorative arts on Thursday evening, while 90 Carlton: Winter hosted over 500 individuals from students to field experts back at the museum on the same night.

Joseph Litts, a curatorial intern and Beard scholar at the museum, said about the weekend, “Seeing Georgia so well represented in the talks was particularly meaningful for me, as was noting the various—and frequently surprising—ways in which Georgia and Georgians have been intrinsically involved with decorative arts, as makers, consumers, and scholars.”

We would like to thank the Forward Arts Foundation, Georgia Humanities and all of our sponsors for helping make this hugely successful weekend possible.

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McKenzie Peterson

Intern, Department of Communications

An Evening on William Bartram

On Friday, September 24, the Oconee Cultural Arts Foundation will host “An Evening on 18th Century Naturalist William Bartram.” This event will last from 6 to 8 p.m. and is free to the public. Two new books will be featured: “The Flower Seeker: An Epic Poem of William Bartram,” by Phillip Lee Williams, and “Bartram’s Living Legacy: The Travels and the Nature of the South,” edited by Dorinda G. Dallmeyer. Landscape artist Philip Juras provided the artwork for both books’ covers, and more of his work will be exhibited that evening in “Searching for Bartram’s Wilderness: Studies from the Field.”

Williams, Dallmeyer and Juras will all be available to speak and autograph books. For more information about this event, visit OCAF, and to learn more about the books go to http://bit.ly/bPOnBc.

The Georgia Museum of Art has its own link to William Bartram. The naturalist’s work was highlighted most recently in the museum’s publication of papers from the Fourth Henry D. Green Symposium of the Decorative Arts, “A Colorful Past,” which can be found in our online gift shop.

More on the 2010 Green Symposium

Bonnie Ramsey, former director of communications for the museum and member of the Decorative Arts Advisory Committee, sent out the following earlier this week:

The Henry D. Green Symposium accolades continue to roll in to Dale
Couch and Linda Chesnut. After a packed 48-hour schedule, over 325 attendees from eight states and speakers cannot stop talking about the program and the weekend's activities. Congratulations to all who made this event a success: the staffs of the Georgia Museum of Art and the Center for Continuing Education, members of the decorative arts committee, the gracious hosts and hostesses for the social events and our beloved sponsors. As Bill Eiland likes to say, "hats off" to all and especially to the adjunct curator (who defies that term) who not only survived his first symposium but made many new friends for the program in the process.

Here's a sampling of the enthusiastic responses:

"The symposium was FABULOUS!! We loved it being at the Center for Continuing Education. It made it so much nicer for everyone..."
Mary Burdell
St. Simons

"It was an honor to have been asked to participate...I cannot thank GMOA and the advisory committee enough for the hospitality and kindness I was shown. It was simply overwhelming. I am sorry I could not stay and thank each member personally."
Charlotte Crabtree
The Silver Vault, Charleston

"...I thought everything went beautifully, and I agree that the lectures were all good. You Georgia folks really know how to to give a good symposium! I've never been wined and dined quite as thoroughly as I was by the good
people of Athens! I am also grateful for the rides to various places..."
June Lucas
MESDA

"...Personally I thought the symposium was perfect and would be hard to improve upon. I like the venue and, man, you Georgians know how to entertain! June and I both loved all the wonderful parties. The hosts could not have been warmer or more welcoming."
Robert Leath
MESDA

"Could not have been better" certainly applied to the entire weekend! In case you did not have a chance to purchase "A Colorful Past: Decorative Arts of Georgia," a collection of the 2008 symposium papers, you can do so by contacting the Museum Shop.

You can order it online from the shop or call 706.542.0450, where Amy Miller will be happy to take your order for the book, which is full-color and retails for $35 + shipping and handling. Distribution is being handled by UGA Press, so, with luck, you'll start to see the book showing up in Atlanta-area bookstores soon.

Art Around Athens (and Beyond)

If you're a decorative-arts person, you will, of course, be at Robert Leath's lecture tonight (7 p.m. at the Georgia Center for Continuing Education) as part of the Henry D. Green Symposium of the Decorative Arts, especially considering that it's free and open to the public (thanks to the Georgia Humanities Council). The rest of the symposium, which runs today and tomorrow, mostly at the Georgia Center, requires registration but should be a great deal of fun, as always. If for some reason you're not planning on doing all that, here are some other arts-related events going on this weekend in the Athens area and a bit beyond.

From 5 to 7 p.m., the UGA College of Environment and Design’s Circle Gallery will hold a closing reception for its exhibition "Italia," which consists of photographs and sketches of Latium, Tuscany and Venetia by professors Brian LaHaie of UGA and Clark Lundell of Auburn University. Next up at the Circle Gallery, "Plant Communities of the Trail of Tears," a collaboration between CED professor Alfie Vick’s Maymester class and the UGA Institute of Native American Studies, which runs February 3–24.


Friday, from 6 to 8 p.m., the Madison Morgan Cultural Center will hold an opening reception for the exhibition "Myths and Legends: Works on Paper by Andy Warhol," drawn from the private collection of Wes and Missy Cochran, with a gallery talk by Wes at 7 p.m. The exhibition consists of 23 silkscreened works by Warhol depicting subjects including John Wayne, Teddy Roosevelt, Super Man, Annie Oakley, John Kennedy, Mickey Mouse, the Wicked Witch of the West and Greta Garbo and will be on display through April 2.


The Lamar Dodd School of Art is hosting two opening receptions at 7 p.m. for exhibitions in its East Campus building and an open house for the jewelry and metalwork department from 8 to 10 p.m. at the Cedar St Art Annex that will show student work from intro to graduate-level courses. Opening at the Dodd proper are "@LAST: Ceramics by Arthur Gonzalez" (through February 19; image above) and "Kathy Prescott: Translucent Fusions" (through May 7). We'll let the art school describe them to you:

Dark, somber and foreboding, Arthur Gonzalez's works encourage serious deliberation and reflection on the relationship between personal concerns and world issues. Raw in form, lacking in smoothness and rough in finish, the ceramic sculptures give glimpses of a conversation or a contemplation in progress. Gonzalez's creations of ceramic and found objects reveal visions and feelings that are not polished but ongoing processes of gyrating thoughts and churning emotions that threaten to erupt into reality and consciousness to defy the fantasy of a peaceful experience.

“Drawing with other people’s marks” is the way Kathy Prescott describes her transfer collages rendered on wood board. They display her reverence for images, whether masterpieces of Western painting, nineteenth-century photographs, examples of pastry tip patterns from Martha Stewart Living or advertisements for Victoria’s Secret lingerie and Spanish cocktail olives. Even though modern technologies might come to mind, Photoshop was never even considered here. In this era of digital manipulation of images Kathy’s work is stubbornly and programmatically manual. She produces unique objects that invite meditative contemplation and capture the sense of old photographs’ melancholy. Their varnished surface gives the impression of softly filtering the light streaming from within the images, containing luminous, superimposed, inner screens. Crisp lines suspended in white space lead one’s gaze to areas of graphic flatness or volumes modeled in shades of gentle grays. Taking away the exuberance of color is a sign of the artist’s preference for understatement and self-effacement, but it is also a way of making things more complex. These essays in white, black and gray emerge as a study of the dynamic between drawing, printmaking and photography.

On Saturday, Ciné Barcafé hosts the 20th Annual Mental Health Art Auction to raise funds for Mental Health America of NE Georgia from 6 to 9 p.m. Admission is free.

From 4 to 6 p.m., the Athens-Clarke County Library will have an opening reception in its Top of the Stairs Gallery for an exhibition featuring paintings by Mia Merlin. And at 8 p.m. Athens Community Theatre will host an Athens for Haiti Benefit. Admission is $5. Storytellers, dancers, musicians, teachers and an eclectic consortium of local artists have organized their talents for an exciting hodgepodge of entertainment to benefit a Haiti relief fund. There will be a silent auction of art, classes, books, jewelry, facials, antiques and more. A ways out of town, the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta is hosting its fourth annual print fair from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., a great opportunity to pick up some great inexpensive art.

Green Symposium Registration Online

Just in case you're interested in registering for the upcoming Fifth Henry D. Green Symposium of the Decorative Arts, set to be held January 29 and 30, 2010, at the Georgia Center for Continuing Education, and aren't on our mailing list for the registration brochure, please know that, thanks to the efforts of our lovely and talented webmistress, you can:

1. Download a pdf of the brochure.

2. Register online, complete with payment by credit card and the ability to donate us extra money if you'd like to.

3. Print a mailable paper form for registration.

Please pass these links along to anyone you think might be interested in attending. We're looking forward to the symposium, which is always loads of fun and incredibly educational, and the blueline for the publication of papers from the fourth symposium should arrive at the museum tomorrow for sign off by the department of publications, meaning it will be available for purchase, at a discounted price of $25, at the symposium.

GMOA in the News

Art Daily has covered both the acquisitions Paul detailed below on this blog (the Billups portraits) and the award of a $50,000 grant by the NEA to GMOA to fund a curator of decorative arts.

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has awarded the Georgia Museum of Art (GMOA) a $50,000 grant through the 2009 NEA Direct Grants: Museum-Recovery Act. Recognizing the importance of the nonprofit arts industry on the economy, the Recovery Act provides stimulus funds, which the NEA uses in an effort to preserve jobs in the nonprofit arts sector that are threatened by the current economic downturn. GMOA is one of only nine nonprofit arts organizations in Georgia that received a grant, which will provide salary support for positions deemed critical to an organization’s artistic mission. Only organizations that were awarded NEA funding over the past four years were eligible.

The stimulus grant will provide a year of salary and benefits to fill the vacant position of curator of decorative arts. The curator directs the museum’s Henry D. Green Center for the Study of the Decorative Arts, which has as its primary focus the decorative arts and material culture of Georgia. Founded in 1998, the Green Center produces exhibitions, publications and educational programs that reach audiences in Georgia and well beyond the region, thus serving a critical role in the museum’s mission and its long-range and strategic goals.

“Happily, this very timely grant allows us to continue the work of the Henry D. Green Center without missing a beat,” said the museum’s director, Dr. William U. Eiland.

Among the first duties of the interim curator of decorative arts is to plan and present the fifth biennial Henry D. Green Symposium of the Decorative Arts, “Neighboring Voices: The Decorative Culture of Our Southern Cousins,” on January 29-30, 2010, and edit the presentations for publication following the event. The curator will design the display of the permanent collection of decorative arts in the museum’s new gallery wing and formalize the Henry D. Green Center with the new GMOA humanities study centers, opening in early 2011. The curator will resume development of a major survey exhibition and catalogue of the decorative arts in Georgia, circa 1750-2000, along with other original exhibitions, and will direct new acquisitions of decorative arts, with an emphasis on works made in Georgia, the South and the United States.

Save the Date...

We're waiting on these postcards from the printer that encourage you to save January 29 and 30, 2010 (which may seem very far away but is just around the corner), for the fifth annual Henry D. Green Symposium of the Decorative Arts: "Neighboring Voices: The Decorative Culture of Our Southern Cousins." This time we'll focus on states surrounding Georgia. The symposium will be a little shorter than in years past, but we are thrilled to be able to hold it on its regular schedule, and the publication of papers from the fourth symposium will be available by then for purchase. So look for your postcard some time after July 1 and let us know if you need to change your address by calling 706.542.4662 or emailing bpwade at uga.edu.

New Discoveries in Georgia Painted Furniture

Open publication - Free publishing - More history

This publication, which accompanied the exhibition of the same name in January 2008, was so popular that we've given away almost every copy we had printed. We don't doubt that we'll keep getting requests for it, so we've archived the whole thing on Issuu, embedded above. It's not quite the same as with the beautiful paper we printed it on, but it's in the ballpark.

Green Symposium News

If you've been wondering about the status of the biennial Henry D. Green Symposium of the Decorative Arts, given our current lack of a building and closure for construction and renovation, worry no longer. The next Green Symposium is being planned for early 2010, and we'll bring you more details as we have them, including the theme and more specific dates. The symposium is one of the most popular and successful events organized by the museum, and we are at least as happy as many of you to be able to continue to put it on.