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Best Of Atlanta 2007 Poets Madmen Large


Poets, Artists & Madmen



Atlanta’s cultural scene is a mirror image of the city itself: bustling with talent, flush with options, more than a little bit transient, certainly far-flung, but always full of surprises. There is a little bit of this over here, a little bit of that over there. There are all these seemingly disparate pieces, but without much of a unifying element.

So it goes in the cultural life of a still-growing New South city, where there will often be something old (the Fox Theatre), something new (BEEP BEEP Gallery), something borrowed (the High’s Louvre exhibit) and something that might just blow you away (take your pick). This year’s winners show that we are, indeed, a city that is alternately changing and staying the same. Sometimes it’s both; what could be hipper than hanging out at that old battle axe of a drive-in, the Starlight? How cool is it to see an artist as red-hot as a Radcliffe Bailey or a Fahamu Pecou at the traditional High Museum?

We have a population just large enough to support the gonzo stylings of spoken-word guru the Subliminator one night and a theatrical tribute to the late newspaper columnist Celestine Sibley the next. With one foot in the past and another in the future, Atlanta’s cultural scene may be a bit of a balancing act, but it’s fun to watch straddle.

— David Lee Simmons

Best Art Event BOA Award Winner

Year » 2007
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2007 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Critics Pick
Atlanta Center for Photography Project Lab (Featured)
Under executive director Anne Dennington’s tutelage (which will sadly end this year when she relocates with her husband) ATLANTA CELEBRATES PHOTOGRAPHY has grown into one of the city’s most anticipated events. Founded in 1999 by a group of photo historians and artists, the annual Octobermore...

Under executive director Anne Dennington’s tutelage (which will sadly end this year when she relocates with her husband) ATLANTA CELEBRATES PHOTOGRAPHY has grown into one of the city’s most anticipated events. Founded in 1999 by a group of photo historians and artists, the annual October series of exhibitions and lectures and an increasingly interesting public art component have made a case for photography’s centrality on the Atlanta art scene. Each year the crowds grow, and the lecturers get better. This fall look for talks by 2004 Whitney Biennial vet Alec Soth, London-based Turner Prize nominee Sam Taylor-Wood and New York Times magazine deputy photo editor Kira Pollack.


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Best Art Exhibit in a Gallery BOA Award Winner

Year » 2007
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2007 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Critics Pick
Whitespace Gallery (Featured)
Owner Susan Bridges watched viewers choke up and experience surges of emotion at an especially memorable, quietly beautiful show by DAVID YOAKLEY MITCHELL AT WHITESPACE. The Georgia-based photographer offered images of elderly family members and speeding locomotives passing on the edge of small Southernmore...
Owner Susan Bridges watched viewers choke up and experience surges of emotion at an especially memorable, quietly beautiful show by DAVID YOAKLEY MITCHELL AT WHITESPACE. The Georgia-based photographer offered images of elderly family members and speeding locomotives passing on the edge of small Southern towns. His most powerful images — which showed a rare tenderness and a clear eye for detail — were the tidy, personality-infused homes of a dying generation of Southerners. Mitchell’s show had an emotional depth that could take your breath away. The peaceful privacy of the alternative gallery — located in a former carriage house tucked behind an Inman Park Victorian — made the event all the more moving. less...

Best Art Exhibit in a Museum BOA Award Winner

Year » 2007
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2007 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Critics Pick
High Museum of Art (Featured)
The explosively hued MORRIS LOUIS NOW: AN AMERICAN MASTER REVISITED was a memorable celebration of color and size at the High Museum. The retrospective was a welcome shout-out to old-school painting, featuring wall-sized “stained” canvases from the 1950s and early ’60s. Thoughmore...
The explosively hued MORRIS LOUIS NOW: AN AMERICAN MASTER REVISITED was a memorable celebration of color and size at the High Museum. The retrospective was a welcome shout-out to old-school painting, featuring wall-sized “stained” canvases from the 1950s and early ’60s. Though the High was more inclined to promote its continuing Louvre exhibitions, the Morris Louis show proved there was room for everyone in the new and much-improved museum. Both vibrant and oddly soothing, the impressive paintings allowed modern and contemporary art curator Jeffrey Grove to explore an essential American artist. less...