Banner image: Professional headshot of Erin Dunn. Courtesy of Adam Kuehl Photography.

The Dodd Galleries at the Lamar Dodd School of Art is thrilled to announce the Fall 2023 Margie E. West Prize, a distinction awarded to an esteemed alum of the Lamar Dodd School of Art who is invited to curate or showcase their latest work in the Margie E. West Gallery. The fourth recipient of the prize, Erin Dunn, ’14 MA guest curates an exhibition with collaborator and photography alumna Ansley West Rivers, ’06 BFA titled Ansley West Rivers: Holding Time, which will be on display in the Margie E. West Gallery from September 14 to November 1, 2023.

Previously, Dunn and West Rivers worked together for the 2019 solo exhibition Source to Sea: Ansley West Rivers at the Jepson Center at Telfair Museums. Dunn remarked then on West Rivers’s work “Her ethereal photographs draw the viewer in with beauty and hopefully ignite a desire to save what is being threatened.”

Dunn and West Rivers will discuss their latest exhibition during an Artist + Curator Q & A on Wednesday September 13 from 5:30 to 6:30 PM at the Lamar Dodd School of Art, room S150.

The exhibition reception for Ansley West Rivers: Holding Time will take place the following day on Thursday, September 14, from 6 - 8 pm alongside four new exhibitions on view in the Dodd Galleries and open graduate art studios showcased for the school’s annual Art Party Extravaganza.

Both events are free and open to the public. Join us!

Ansley West Rivers, Snake River, Swan Valley, Idaho, 2021.

Dunn, whose main interests focus on the intersection of social and cultural issues addressed through the medium of photography, graduated with a Master’s in Art History from the school in 2014. She is Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at Telfair Museums in Savannah, Georgia, having served in various capacities in the Telfair curatorial team since 2014. Currently, she is working on the first major museum exhibition of the photographer Frank Stewart co-organized with The Phillips Collection. In addition, she has spearheaded projects for Telfair’s #art912 initiative, which raises the visibility and promotes the vitality of artists living and working in Savannah.

Ansley West Rivers: Holding Time brings together three distinct bodies of photographic work by the artist to show the disquieting intersection of landscape and humanity. Over the past decade, West Rivers has traversed the country photographing the rapidly transforming landscape with her large format camera. Holding Time presents the beauty and wildness of the lands we inhabit in hopes of evoking conversation around the very sources of life itself. 

More about Erin Dunn

Erin Dunn is Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at Telfair Museums in Savannah, GA where she has been a member of the curatorial team since 2014. She has curated several exhibitions including Watershed: Contemporary Landscape Photography, Bruce Davidson: Face to Face, Feels like Freedom: Phillip J. Hampton, Anything Goes: Contemporary Art and Materials, as well as solo presentations of work by artists including Sonya Clark and Noel W Anderson. Dunn holds a BA from Emory University and an MA from the University of Georgia.

About the Margie E. West Prize

Established in 2020, the Margie E. West Prize recognizes an accomplished artist or scholar who  graduated from the Lamar Dodd School of Art with a solo exhibition in the Margie E. West Gallery. Past recipients of the Margie E West Prize include John Douglas Powers (’08, MFA with distinction) in 2020, Pam Longobardi (’81, BFA) in 2021, and Zipporah Camille Thompson (’15, MFA) in spring of 2023. The Lamar Dodd School of Art is grateful for the support of the West family for our programming and exhibitions in the Marjorie Eichenlaub West Gallery, which is supported by the Marjorie Eichenlaub West Gallery Endowment Fund. 

Margie West served on the boards of The High Museum, the Georgia Museum of Art, and was a long-time member of The Forward Arts Foundation and a founding member of the Ceramic Circle of Atlanta. Her love of the arts was shared and passed down to her family, as her granddaughters attended Lamar Dodd School of Art. Margie’s contributions to the arts will be part of her lasting legacy. She will always be remembered as a voracious collector with a keen eye and unbridled passion for the arts. 

Tintype photograph of Ansley West Rivers. Courtesy of the artist.

About the Artist

Ansley West Rivers (American, b. 1983) holds a BFA from the University of Georgia and an MFA from the California College of the Arts. She currently lives and works in Victor, Idaho. West Rivers’ work is featured in many public and private collections including Telfair Museums, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, LaGrange Art Museum, and The Mayo Collection, among others. Additionally, West Rivers’ work has been shown at EUQINOM Gallery (San Francisco, CA), the Illges Gallery at Columbus State University (Columbus, GA), Telfair Museums’ Jepson Center (Savannah, GA), Laney Contemporary (Savannah, GA), Wattis Institute of Contemporary Art (San Francisco, CA), Sous Les Etoiles Gallery (New York, NY), Burrard Arts Foundation (Vancouver BC), The Brower Center (Berkley, CA), Kala Art Institute (Berkley, CA), Carmel Visual Arts (Carmel, CA), Hathaway Gallery (Atlanta, GA), United Photo Industries (DUMBO, Brooklyn, NY), The Print Center (Philadelphia, PA), and The Wiregrass Museum (Dothan, AL).