Whistling in the Dark: UGA MFA at the Athenaeum

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The Athenaeum

287 West Broad Street

Galleries open Thursday - Saturday, 10:30 AM - 5:00 PM

“But one can insist, as many have, that only the changing is really enduring and all else is whistling in the dark.”
Allan Kaprow, “Notes on the Creation of a Total Art,” 1958

The Lamar Dodd School of Art is pleased to announce the opening of the annual MFA Thesis Exhibition, displaying works by students graduating with their Master of Fine Arts Degree. The exhibition entitled Whistling in the Dark will run from April 12th through May 15th. The show will premiere at the University’s newest contemporary art space, the Athenaeum, located at 287 West Broad Street.

Whistling in the Dark features the work of seven MFA students working in a variety of media from video to installation, painting, photography, and sculpture. The exhibition takes its name from the artist Allan Kaprow’s seminal 1958 essay “Notes on the Creation of a Total Art.” Kaprow suggests that the only way to thrive is to change. Throughout the three years of their studies, these students have continually reinvented and re-examined their practice. Changing and then changing again, never more so than in this past year marked by a global pandemic and uprisings due to racial injustice. Responding to and growing from these struggles, the artists' works explore themes related to memory, the banality of everyday life, visual representation, questions of power and who wields it, and legacies of the American South. Above all, the exhibition is a testament to the growth of these students as they refuse a fixed position, choosing to endure.

Artists in the exhibition include: Mac Balentine, Matthew J. Brown, Caitlin Adair Daglis, Alex McClay, Katharine Miele, Ciel Rodriguez, and Kelsey Wishik.

About the Athenaeum

The Athenaeum, as in ancient Greece, is a sanctuary dedicated to learning -- a place where people gather and engage leading artists and scholars in pursuit of goals once associated with Athena, goddess not only of art and civilization, but also the many noble goals that art can serve: wisdom, courage, and justice. This new contemporary art space will begin its full programming in the Fall of 2021 with a solo exhibition by Trevor Paglen.

The galleries are open Thursday - Saturday, 10:30 AM - 5:00 PM.

About the UGA MFA Program

Each year, ten exceptional students join our vibrant community of artists and scholars. Over the course of 3 years, they take studio and seminar classes, supplementing their studies in studio, art history, and art criticism with courses in other disciplines in the humanities and sciences that are relevant to their creative practice. Their interests are diverse, but they are united by their ambition to make art that matters, as well as their conviction that art is a form of inquiry in its own right, essential to the academic mission of the university and the production of knowledge as such.