‘Expedition Dinosaur’ to open at Daytona’s Museum of Arts & Sciences
See a preview of the new ‘Expedition Dinosaur” exhibit at Daytona’s Museum of Arts & Sciences.
The life of an art addict gets overwhelming at times. Let me tell you a little about my September and about some of the great art happenings coming soon.
Over Labor Day weekend, my husband and I revisited Santa Fe, N. M. One of our favorite towns, it offers an absolute plethora of ceramics, jewelry and art. We revisited the very accessible and educational Georgia O’Keeffe Museum; enjoyed the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA), founded by the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA); and purchased a small painting from Benjamin Normand, a self-taught plein air painter exhibiting with many other fine artists in the garden beside the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi. But the highlight of that trip (besides a Jon Batiste concert at the Opera House!) was reconnecting with former Savannah art maven Meredith Gray and accompanying her to an opening at Duende Gallery, about 30 minutes south of the city in the tiny town of Galisteo. Housed in northern New Mexico’s oldest dance hall dating to the 1890’s, Robert King, a native of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, opened the gallery in the spring of 2024. On his website, Duende Ceramics, King explains how he works with “wild clay, locally sourced rocks, minerals, sand, and trees [with a goal of creating] pottery that embodies the essence of the rugged environment where they have rested for millennia.” Stunningly gorgeous pieces and well worth a visit.
A D.C. hotel with a contemporary art museum
I also visited Washington, D.C. (if traveling soon, check out “The Outwin 2025: American Portraiture Today,” the seventh annual triennial portrait competition in the National Portrait Gallery, featuring 35 portraits selected from more than 3,300 entries) and finally saw the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark. This museum has been on my radar since 2016 when Savannah’s Telfair Museums presented the very exciting “State of the Art: Discovering American Art Now”, organized by Crystal Bridges’ curators after traveling more than 100,000 miles and visiting 1,000 artist studios to select works by 102 contemporary artists. The Jepson Center showed 40 of them. Because of the visceral impact of that show, I was disappointed by the Crytal Bridges’s collection, although I highly recommend the museum to anyone who would enjoy a basic art history course of American Art from Indigenous artists through today.
Housed in a spectacular Moshe Safdie building―the same architect who designed Savannah’s Jepson Center―and situated in beautiful woodlands, the artwork is thoughtfully and spaciously laid out. However, to my disappointment, most of the contemporary collection was already crated in anticipation of expanded galleries and facilities scheduled to open June 6, 2026. My disenchantment was somewhat alleviated by my stay in the 21c Museum Hotel, a property designed by a Louisville, Ky. hospitality company founded by contemporary art collectors and preservationists. 21c bills itself as the one of the largest contemporary art museums in the U.S. and as the only collecting museum dedicated solely to art of the 21st century. During my stay, the show “Dress Up, Speak Up: Regalia and Resistance” was installed throughout the hotel’s 12,000 square feet of exhibition space. Displaying a wide range of media from fibers to video, it addresses how discrimination and injustice have shaped both identity and artistic representation.
Atlanta Art Fair at Pullman Yards
Finally, the last weekend of September brought 60 exhibitors and over 12,000 visitors to the second annual Atlanta Art Fair at Pullman Yards. I cannot recommend this fair highly enough. With a very manageable number of booths, an extensive and interesting selection of talks and lectures, and 11 public projects, the fair was easy to navigate, non-intimidating, and fun. There were so many highlights: the booth curated by Savannah’s Laney Contemporary, with sculpture by Curtis Patterson, paintings by Will Penny and Betsy Cain, and photography by Ansley West Rivers; the booth curated by the Atlanta Photography Group. I am excited to visit their gallery on Piedmont Avenue on my next visit. The booth by a favorite Atlanta gallery, Spalding Nix Fine Art, is currently showing paintings by Savannah’s Katherine Sandoz. The Florida Mining Gallery of Jacksonville, Fla., showed magnificent large-scale collages by our own Marcus Kenney, and the new-to-me Durham, N.C. Ella West Gallery exhibited exciting portraiture by contemporary Black artist, Clarence Heyward. With genuine warmth from gallery owners and artists alike, and not a whiff of Art Basel snootiness, art-loving Savannahians should put this fair on their calendars for next year.
Savannah’s current and future art happenings
Back in Savannah, there is a cornucopia of art offerings this fall. Here are just a few of many on my radar. The seventh annual Georgia Color, a juried event exclusively for Georgia plein air artists, returns Oct. 14-17 with lectures, demonstrations, and a gallery in the former Vendors on Victory space at 2123 E. Victory Drive that will display and sell paintings created throughout the event. New works by Chris Moss, MFA, are displayed in “Yoink!” at the Thompson Savannah, 201 Port St., through the end of the year, while Oct. 23 marks the opening of “Sad Rider,” a new show of paintings and ceramics by Atlanta-based artist Tori Tinsley at Laney Contemporary, 1810 Mills B Lane Blvd.
As mentioned in last week’s column, the show “John and Linda Jensen: The Lucky Ones” at Thunderbolt’s Ology Gallery, “around back” at 415 Bonaventure Road, is a stellar 50-year retrospective of this couple’s creative output. Phil Musen’s narrative series of paintings about the dreaded “Savannah Apocalypse” is at his Cute Tomatoes Gallery ” is at his Cute Tomatoes Gallery through the end of October, and Peter E. Robert’s “Working Titles: Real World Success Stories from Life After the Sideshow, Midway and Big Top” continues its run at Location Gallery, 251 Bull St., through early November. With his usual wit and wicked sense of humor, Roberts launches a book and presents papercut assemblages that relate 18 biographies of what life is like after leaving the circus: The juggler becomes a successful baker, the conjoined twins become efficiency experts, the bearded lady becomes a wig maker, the tightrope walker becomes a politician, and more.
My favorite art fair of the year is Saturday, Oct. 23: The 2025 Isle of Hope Art and Music Festival will scratch your art itch, and then some. Look for food trucks, kids’ activities, music on two stages until 8 p.m. and art vendors from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. set up along beautiful Bluff Drive, on Rose Avenue, and in Paxton Park.
On Nov. 7, Look!, Art Southeast’s annual group exhibition of contemporary Southern artists, opens in the Ellis Gallery, 2301 Bull St. Check out the website for their many other offerings this fall, including a not-to-be-missed Nov. 13 party and fundraising extravaganza called Art Attack, coordinated by the incomparable Shelley Smith, with creative partners Kelley McClune and Jamie Lynn Failing.
And over at Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum, the second edition of “Celestial Seafarers” will light up the Scarborough House and Gardens with glowing installations and soundscapes by such acclaimed contemporary artists as Kenney, Todd Schroeder, Keving Kirkwood, Joshua Alexander and others on the evenings of Nov. 13 and 14.
Meanwhile, if you find yourself in Richmond Hill, check out the inaugural “Far Away, 2025” group exhibition at Photopoint Gallery, 30 Cherokee St. The impressive list of 19 painters, jewelers, photographers and sculptors includes Dicky Stone, Joshua Yates, Dana Richardson, Brian Condon and Marilyn Brady.