Lamar Dodd School of Art

Ted Whisenhunt: Watermarks, Reading Rivers of Southern Appalachia

Exhibition • August 17, 2026 – September 30, 2026

Ted Whisenhunt is an artist, designer, author, musician, and educator whose work is inspired by the landscapes and cultural traditions of the American South. Originally from Alabama and now based in the mountains of North Georgia, he combines painting, sculpture, drawing, and design to explore themes of place, memory, and regional identity. His work has been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the Southeast, including the Huntsville Museum of Art, Georgia State University, Berea College, and the Rymer Gallery. Whisenhunt is the author, illustrator, and designer of Watermarks: Reading Rivers of Southern Appalachia and serves as Professor of Art &...

threshold (true): finding comfort in hidden worlds | Artist commissioned bathroom by Elinor Saragoussi

Exhibition • January 17, 2026 – December 31, 2028

The Athenaeum is excited to host two new projects as additional opportunities to engage with and support contemporary artists in our building and programming. With the prompt to create “the wildest bathrooms in Athens,” the Athenaeum invited two Athens-based artists—Amanda Burk and Elinor Saragoussi—to design, envision, and transform our two ordinary bathroom spaces into artistically inspired installations. Burk’s minimalist room titled Mars: a color study, and Saragoussi’s maximalist installation titled threshold (true): finding comfort in hidden worlds, offer a spectrum between personal approaches while both remaining highly immersive visitor experiences. These commissions will remain on view for the next two years. We are...

Mars: a color study | Artist commissioned bathroom by Amanda Burk MFA ’07

Exhibition • January 17, 2026 – December 31, 2028

The Athenaeum is excited to host two new projects as additional opportunities to engage with and support contemporary artists in our building and programming. With the prompt to create “the wildest bathrooms in Athens,” the Athenaeum invited two Athens-based artists—Amanda Burk and Elinor Saragoussi—to design, envision, and transform our two ordinary bathroom spaces into artistically inspired installations. Burk’s minimalist room titled Mars: a color study, and Saragoussi’s maximalist installation titled threshold (true): finding comfort in hidden worlds, offer a spectrum between personal approaches while both remaining highly immersive visitor experiences. These commissions will remain on view for the next two years. We are...

Blake Jacobsen: Through Service We Grow

Exhibition • August 27, 2026 – November 6, 2026

The Dodd Galleries presents Through Service We Grow, a new body of work by Dodd photography faculty Blake Jacobsen. For nearly a decade, Jacobsen has been returning home to photograph his family’s truck repair business in Southwest Florida. For his first solo exhibition since joining the faculty at the University of Georgia, his latest project turns the camera away from his own family and onto the mechanics who work at the shop. Following the recent passing of his grandfather, who started the business with the slogan “Through Service We Grow,” the work reflects on labor and service as paths toward self-determination and belonging. As the only male in...

Cornucopia: Ties That Bind

Exhibition • August 27, 2026 – November 6, 2026

The Dodd Galleries present Cornucopia: Ties That Bind, an exhibition drawn from private collections and artists and curated by Dodd Professor of Art, Joseph E. Norman. The exhibition brings together the work of renowned artists of color whose creative practices engage some of the most pressing issues of our time. Featuring works by artists including Sam Gilliam, Francisco Amighetti, Manuel Mendive, Kevin Cole, Francisco Loza, and others, the exhibition explores themes of social justice, cultural identity, environmental change, and the enduring resilience of communities across the globe. Drawing inspiration from the abundance symbolized by its title, Cornucopia presents a rich tapestry of artistic voices and perspectives that reflect both national and international...

Christy Bush: Continuum

Exhibition • January 23, 2027 – March 20, 2027

Christy Bush (American, b. 1970) is an Athens, Georgia-based artist whose intimate and relational portraiture spans more than three decades of fashion, celebrity, and fine art photography. Bush returned to Athens, GA full time in 2008; this solo presentation at the Athenaeum is her first major exhibition in our city. Continuum highlights the working process and ethos that Bush has pursued for decades—a cyclical response to nature, femininity, community and care. On view will be works ranging from the past few decades as well as archival and ephemeral materials bridging her working practice and travels to her resultant photography. Bush’s...

Megan Ledbetter: The Field (2022-2026)

Exhibition • August 29, 2026 – November 21, 2026

In the Athenaeum’s Gallery 2, Megan Ledbetter presents The Field (2022-2026), a photographic series and growing body of research exploring and recognizing a potter’s field in Red Bank, Tennessee—essentially a dumping ground and derelict municipal cemetery for the poor and dispossessed in operation from 1890-1912 just on the outskirts of Chattanooga. With new research unearthed in 2020 by historian Michael Hitt, Ledbetter began accessing and documenting the sites in 2022. Through generous support from the Current Art Fund (2023-2024), Ledbetter’s The Field combines visual imagery, historical research and ephemera, and community engagement to shine a light on the complex overlapping histories at this...

Erin Johnson: The Measure Is Something Else

Exhibition • August 29, 2026 – March 20, 2027

The Athenaeum presents Erin Johnson: The Measure Is Something Else, a mid-career survey of the artist’s work that examines the rough edge of scientific authority where objects of knowledge resist the disciplinary regimes that fix their meaning. Across nine bodies of work—videos, photographs, and objects—created over the past twelve years as well as a new 2026-2027 commission, Johnson lingers in the infrastructures that sustain modernity—archives, libraries, cabinets, classrooms, laboratories, research facilities, and containment sites—documenting unlikely moments of humor and refusal in which subjects such as sexually fluid tomatoes or the immeasurable depth of the sea unsettle the legitimacy of epistemic conventions....

Digital image of green glass door with thin black frame and metal latch between two doors. Green-yellow color behind glass pane.

the green glass door

Exhibition • February 5, 2026 – March 20, 2026

The Dodd Galleries presents the green glass door, where Lamar Dodd School of Art faculty member Jon Vogt’s Digital Printmaking class visualizes what lies beyond ‘the green glass door’, which is the name of a riddle. Within the riddle, certain items can pass through the green glass door, while other items cannot. The green glass door in this sense acts as a filter or limiter according to a rule. Can a grain of sand pass through the door? How about a coffee pot? The Sanford Football Stadium? The Milky Way? (no, yes, yes, no). While it may be easy to...

35th Annual Student Scientific and Medical Illustration Juried Exhibition

Exhibition • February 5, 2026 – March 20, 2026

The Dodd Galleries presents the 35th Annual Student Scientific and Medical Illustration Juried Exhibition with the Scientific Illustration Department in the Lamar Dodd School of Art. The 2026 exhibition represents the longest running annual showcase of the Scientific Illustration department at Lamar Dodd and is presented in conjunction with the Medical Illustration Graduate Program of Augusta University. Through this exhibition we aim to highlight and celebrate the art forms that move natural and medical science forward. We extend special thanks to our 2026 judges Kip Carter, Aaron Cole, Zachary Kevorkian, Hoc Kho, and Stephen Boyd for their consideration and service in recognizing...

Beverly’s Athens

Exhibition • January 16, 2026 – March 21, 2026

Beverly Buchanan (1940–2015) lived in Athens, GA, from 1987 to 2010. “Beverly’s Athens,” the first major solo exhibition of her work in the city, situates Buchanan’s expansive practice from this period within the local and lived conditions that shaped it. The exhibition emphasizes two intertwined threads from Buchanan’s Athens years: her modes of surviving chronic illness in the absence of an equitable healthcare system, and her multidisciplinary efforts to study and commemorate Black Southern geography, traditions, and forms. Bringing together lesser-known works—small sculptures, drawings, photographs, print multiples, autobiographical ephemera, research materials—alongside examples of her noted ‘shacks’ paired with new archival...

Architectural Design, The Arbor Buildings, Athens, GA 2006

Creative Work • Posted October 23, 2025

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