Southern Voices/Global Visions: Southern Curators Summit

About the Summit:

South Arts, in partnership with ArtFields, presents the Southern Curators Summit in Lake City, SC. The Summit is the first of its kind to be organized by South Arts to bring Southern curators working in visual culture together to begin high-level discussions about the current state of the arts in the South and to begin to craft a new vision for the arts and culture in this region. Summit Sessions focus topics will include confronting identity, preserving culture, technological impacts, and programming in academia.

Summit Goals:

To initiate conversations among curators working in the South, across all types of institutions, and individuals working independently who present visual culture.
To explore and promote connectivity between and amongst curators who support contemporary southern artists and culture in all its iterations.
To strengthen the South’s position as a great place to live and as a cultural hub that rivals other regions in the country. Forbes’ 2022 list of 25 best places to live and retire in the United States includes 11 southern cities!

Why Lake City, South Carolina?

The Summit takes place in Lake City, South Carolina, the home of ArtFields. Lake City is a charming, small Southern town that, in the last 11 years, has used the arts to drive economic development. ArtFields, the nine-day art competition and celebration, brings thousands of visitors throughout the country to Lake City each spring. Art is displayed in businesses and exhibited in over 32,000 square feet of gallery, warehouse, and non-traditional spaces in the town. It is a must-see event!

Lake City is currently hosting Southern Voices/Global Visions, an exhibition of works by 42 contemporary artists who have received awards through either the South Arts Southern Prize and State Fellows for Visual Arts or from the ArtFields competition. The exhibition challenges preconceived notions and showcases the richness, complexity, and global relevance of Southern art.

Agenda

Thursday, November 30, 2023

Opening Session: Global Starts Here | 1:00 - 2:00 p.m.

Session Leader:
Renaud Proch, Executive & Artistic Director
Independent Curators International, New York, NY

Location:
TRAX Visual Art Center, 122 Sauls St, Lake City, SC 29560

Like the waters of the Mississippi River, art rushes ahead even when its surface appears static; impossible to accurately map, it meanders and erodes; with equal force, it resists definition and constantly redefines what's around it. As curators, how can we adapt the rigid structures within which we work to this kind of dynamic power? An organization supporting curators around the world, Independent Curators International (ICI) has fostered a new generation of curators actively reframing the structures, methodologies, geographies, and language of art from where they stand. This presentation will highlight some of the ways they found to embed into their practice an ongoing process of redefinition that embraces all artists, provides relevant and necessary context for different forms of contemporary art, and allows for richer histories to be told.

Curated Conversations | 2:15 - 3:00 p.m.

Conversations of registrant-identified issues affecting institutions, curators and programmers.

The Power of Unexpected Innovation | 3:15 - 4:15 p.m.

Session Leader:
David Houston, Executive Director and Curator
Ohr-O’Keefe Museum, Biloxi, MS

Location:
TRAX Visual Art Center, 122 Sauls St, Lake City, SC 29560

The Ohr O’Keefe Museum in Biloxi, Mississippi is the result of the confluence of the art potter George Ohr, the architect Frank Gehry and the business and political leader Jerry O’Keefe.

The work of Ohr, the self-styled “Mad Potter of Biloxi” sits in museums beside Picasso and other modern masters. Frank Gehry, at ninety-four, is acknowledged as the most innovative living architect, while Jerry O’Keefe is heralded for his economic and social leadership during the integration of Mississippi.

The convergence of these personal trajectories resulted in a unique institution creating a visionary legacy of innovation that drives the museum's exhibitions and programming.

Participants will engage in discussion about the duality of honoring tradition while supporting innovation. Houston will explore ways in which curators are using tradition and innovation to create opportunities for contemporary artists and how working collaboratively with unexpected institutions may lead to innovative partnerships.

Small Fish in a Big Pond: Programming in Academia | 3:15 - 4:15 p.m.

Session Leader:
Shannon Lindsey, Gallery Director and Curator
University of Central Florida, Orlando

Location:
Jones-Carter Gallery, 105 Henry St, Lake City, SC 29560

There are nearly 700 art galleries and museums embedded in colleges and universities throughout the United States. The University of Central Florida ranks as the second largest university in this country with an enrollment of 70,000 students. The School of Visual Arts and Design has approximately 2,000 majors.

Shannon Lindsey will share challenges of operating the UCF 3,700 sq. ft. gallery including funding, programming limitations and requirements, and strategies for engaging internal and external communities.

Lindsey will lead discussions centered on the artistic and academic roles college and university galleries/museums play in connecting students, practicing artists, educators, and the greater community. What opportunities exist to create new models for operating successfully within a larger university structure?

Friday, December 1, 2023

CITY UNSEEN℠: Snap! Orlando | 9:00 - 10:00 a.m.

Session Leader:
Patrick Kahn, Founder and Curator of Snap! Orlando

Location:
The Continuum, 208 W Main St, Lake City, SC 29560

For over a decade, Snap! Orlando has captured the interest and respect of art enthusiasts, artists, and critics around the world. Snap! has won multiple awards and has been widely recognized as a pioneer for its groundbreaking approach to visual arts, with the Augmented Reality public [AR]t project, CITY UNSEEN℠.

Patrick Kahn, the force behind this innovative project, will share details about CITY UNSEEN℠ from the inception of the idea to the launch of the project. Snap will provide an interactive AR experience during the Zoom session!

In addition to Augmented Reality (AR), participants will engage in conversations about Artificial Intelligence (AI), Non- Fungible Tokens (NFTs), and Generative Pre-trained Transformer (ChatGPT). These technologies are changing image-making, art markets and writing about art. From animatronics of Yayoi Kusama to Beeple’s $69 million sale of an NFT at Christie's, curators are faced with the impact of the digital media on the creative process.

Curated Conversations | 10:15 a.m. - 10:45 a.m.

Conversations of registrant-identified issues affecting institutions, curators and programmers.

Forging A Museum Identity | 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

Session Leader:
Laura Hutchison Bhatti, Ph.D., Director of Collections & Exhibitions
The Metal Museum, Memphis, TN

Location:
The Continuum, 208 W Main St, Lake City, SC 29560

The Metal Museum, in Memphis, Tennessee, was born in the mid-1970s from the idea of an industry museum focused solely on ornamental ironwork. Within a few years of opening in 1979, the scope of the museum expanded to showcase other fields of metalwork, such as jewelry and enamel, while staying rooted to blacksmithing and casting through established artist-in-residency programs.

The Metal Museum is now at a crucial point in its growth, currently undergoing a multi-million-dollar capital campaign and expansion project into a larger and newer facility in the heart of Memphis. At this crossroads, the curatorial team is looking back to the history of metalwork and of the museum while simultaneously looking forward to the future of metalwork in contemporary America.

Dr. Laura Bhatti will open a conversation around crafting a museum's identity to stay true to its original mission in the face of a large expansion project. With her own institution as a starting point, she will lead a discussion around institutional identity, framing an institutional history, and thriving as a unique and niche museum.

Bricks Without Straw: Preservers and Cultivators of the Vernacular | 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

Session Leader:
Paul Barrett, Independent Curator, Birmingham, AL

Location:
The Continuum, 208 W Main St, Lake City, SC 29560

Vernacular artists face pernicious barriers to participation and to finding resources many of us take for granted, ranging from lack of internet access to overcoming decades of institutional preference for more "academic" or "mainstream" artwork. Many of these artists remain overlooked and underserved because curators struggle to accept the work of African-American vernacular artists into the canon of art history. Too many institutions have been slow to recognize the importance of their work even as the Frist Art Museum, High Museum of Art, New Orleans Museum of Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and countless others have dedicated major exhibitions to the works of these artists.

Paul Barrett curated the traveling exhibitions Yvonne Wells and Charlie Lucas: What I Knew How To Do and I, Too, am Thornton Dial, and has been honored to work with Michael Banks, Claudia Pettway Charley, Lonnie Holley, Joe Minter, among others. His exhibition, Assembly: Contemporary Gee's Bend Quilts, opens in Birmingham in January

What can institutions do to provide equitable access, and what can we as curators do better that is of service to under-represented groups of artists? Barrett will lead a discussion to explore networking, engagement, and sustainable solutions to the challenges many vernacular artists struggle against.

Lunch Session: Becoming Southern Voices/Global Visions Curator | 12:15 - 1:15 p.m.

Session Leader:
Dr. Amalia Amaki, Co-Curator, Southern Voices/Global Visions

Location:
The Continuum, 208 W Main St, Lake City, SC 29560

Amalia Amaki discusses the behind the scenes of Southern Voices/Global Visions and the shared curatorial role with NY based curator Eleanor Heartney.

A banner with text reading "Southern Voices Global Visions"

Speakers and Panelists

Speakers and Panelists

Dr. Amalia Amaki

Amalia K. Amaki is an artist, art historian, curator and writer who has organized over thirty art exhibitions across the country. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from Georgia State University, Bachelor of Arts degree in Photography from the University of New Mexico, and Master of Arts degree and Doctor of Philosophy in Modern European and American Art and Culture from Emory University, where she completed a Foreign Study Fellowship in France.

Amaki has taught at Spelman College, the University of North Georgia, University of Delaware and the University of Alabama, and was Scholar-In-Residence at Student Art Centers International (SACI) in Florence, Italy. Her publications include: A Century of African American Art: The Paul R. Jones Collection; Hale Woodruff, Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, and the Academy; African American Folk Art in Kentucky; books on the history of Tuscaloosa and Tuskegee, Alabama; and, numerous essays on American art for books and exhibition catalogs

A National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, Amaki won art commissions from Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games Committee, U.S. General Services Administration, The Coca Cola Company, The Coca Cola Bottling Company, Seagram’s Gin, Absolut Vodka, Miller Brewing Company and the High Museum of Art.

Her work is in collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Minnesota Museum of Art, National Museum for Women in the Arts, High Museum of Art, Mead Museum, Georgia Museum of Art, Birmingham Museum of Art, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, and Museum of Contemporary Art in Georgia, among others.

Paul Barrett

Paul Barrett is an independent curator based in Birmingham, Alabama. He has organized traveling exhibitions for artists including Sara Garden Armstrong, Beverly Buchanan, Thornton Dial, Charlie Lucas, Jerry Siegel, and Yvonne Wells. An avid art collector for more than 35-years, Barrett works to build capacity with small- and medium-sized organizations and promote emerging artists. His 2024 exhibitions include Assembly: Contemporary Gee's Bend Quilters and Willie Cole: Lyrical Reconstructions.

Dr. Laura Bhatti

Dr. Laura Hutchison Bhatti is the Director of Collections & Exhibitions at the Metal Museum. Dr. Bhatti received her PhD in Classics and Classical Archaeology from Johns Hopkins University, her MA in Art History from the University of California, Davis, and her BA in Classics and Art History from Hendrix College. Dr. Bhatti has excavated in northern Greece and participated in excavation research in Athens and Corinth.

At the Metal Museum, Dr. Bhatti enjoys encouraging questions around making and displaying, relishes in witnessing engagement with three-dimensional objects in the galleries and finds the opportunity to collaborate with living artists a refreshing shift from her background in the ancient past.

A native Memphian herself, Dr. Bhatti appreciates her role in continuing to share the history of her city through the curation of pressing and timely exhibitions.

David Houston

David Houston is the Director and Chief Curator of the Ohr O’Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi, Mississippi. He was previously at the Bartlett Center, at Columbus State University, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and The Ogden Museum of Southern Art. He has taught at the Clemson University College of Architecture, The Brandenburg Technical University, Germany, and The University of New Orleans.

Patrick Kahn

Patrick Kahn is the founder of Snap! Orlando [est. 2010], an arts organization which sparked a cultural movement in the region, and has been widely recognized as a driving force behind Orlando’s re-branding efforts as an international cultural destination. Kahn’s efforts have been acknowledged in The New York Times, Delta Sky Magazine, BBC News, Huffington Post, Wired, Miami Times, Elle Magazine, and garnered numerous local publication’s cover stories [Orlando Magazine, Orlando Sentinel, Orlando Weekly], plus coverage on radio [NPR] and TV stations. Patrick Kahn and his wife/partner Holly were featured in Orlando Magazine’s ’50 Most Powerful People’ issues in 2018 and 2019.

In 2018 Snap! Orlando launched ‘CITY UNSEEN,’ the first citywide Augmented Reality site specific public art project, in Orlando. CITY UNSEEN opened artistic borders by launching the city into AR experiences, with fusions of works by internationally renowned artists and AR technology. The project is currently expanding its footprint through 2021. In March 2019, the CITY UNSEEN project was awarded the Innovation and Technology Golden Brick Award by the Downtown Orlando Partnership. In June 2019, CITY UNSEEN was featured in the inaugural issue of ‘Innovate Orlando’, a 350-page in-depth study and AR video series that showcases the people, companies, products, and services that are leading the growth within a cities innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Prior to launching Snap! Orlando, Patrick Kahn was Publisher and Editor in Chief of The Book LA, a Los Angeles based luxury art collection-style quarterly magazine, in publication for 22 years, and distributed nationally in newsstands, luxury retail stores & hotels.

Kahn was born in Zurich, Switzerland, raised in Paris, France, and graduated from Boston University, School of Communication.

Shannon Lindsey

Shannon Rae Lindsey is a multimedia artist, Gallery Director and Associate Lecturer teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in the School of Visual Arts and Design at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, FL. Shannon received an MFA in Studio Art from the University of South Carolina and a BFA in Fine Arts with a minor in art history from the University of South Florida.

Lindsey has participated in thirteen solo exhibitions and over thirty-five group exhibitions as an interdisciplinary artist exploring installation, sculpture, screen printing, and mixed-media collage. Her artwork embodies notions of order and disorder with manufactured construction materials that challenge their conventional context, setting, and utility. Her recent solo exhibition CONSTRUCT::CONNECT was curated by Patrick Kahn (Snap! Orlando) and displayed at the Terrace Gallery in Orlando, Florida and she was the winner of the 2014 South Carolina 701 CCA Prize.

Since 2021, she has been the Vice President of Finance for Foundations in Art: Theory and Education, a non-profit educational association dedicated to excellence in the development and teaching of college-level foundation courses in studio work and art history. 

Renaud Proch

Renaud Proch is the Executive & Artistic Director of Independent Curators International (ICI), a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the work of curators to create stronger art communities through experimentation, collaboration, and international engagement. Before joining ICI in 2009, he was Senior Director of the Project in New York, as well as Director of MC, in Los Angeles. He co-founded ART2102, an independent art space in Los Angeles in 2003; and the backroom in 2005, an evolving archive of artists’ source materials and itinerant researchproject. In 2011, he co-curated with Khwezi Gule a traveling retrospective of South African artist Tracey Rose for the Johannesburg Art Gallery, South Africa, and the Umea Bildmuseet, Sweden.

Learn More About Southern Voices/Global Visions

Want to learn more about the Southern Voices/Global Visions exhibition on display through December 3, 2023, in Lake City, South Carolina?

Visit the Southern Voices/Global Visions Website

Questions?

If you have any questions about the Southern Curators Summit or the Southern Voices/Global Visions exhibition, please contact: Caitlin Bright at 803.240.5600 or by email below.

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