A Conversation with Lauren Jackson Harris on the Challenges and Opportunities Facing Atlanta’s Art Scene
Photo courtesy of Lauren Jackson Harris.
Photo courtesy of Lauren Jackson Harris.
Atlanta-based art curator Lauren Jackson Harris has organized exhibitions for institutions such as Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta Art Fair, Swan Coach House Gallery, and Zucot Gallery during her 15+ years in the arts. As Program Director at The Black Embodiments Studio (BES), co-founder of Black Women in Visual Art (BWVA), and a sought-after public speaker, her talks regularly address the intersections of race, gender, art, advocacy, and institutional change. Needless to say, when it comes to weighing in on the challenges and opportunities facing Atlanta’s art scene, she’s not just speaking from the sidelines. She’s in the trenches, shaping the conversation and pushing for change.
I spoke with Harris earlier this summer about the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to Atlanta’s arts ecosystem to learn, from her perspective, what is needed to help it reach its full potential. What follows are excerpts from this conversation in which she shares her candid takes on everything from the gap between Atlanta’s image and its reality, to finding work in Atlanta’s arts market, and the state of art criticism.
Atlanta is a city that actively markets itself as a creative capital, but beneath the buzzwords and glossy place-marketing campaigns designed to promote a sense of “belonging” lies a complex reality for the artists and cultural workers who call the metro area home.
“Georgia as a state right now is ranked the lowest statewide in terms of art funding. Atlanta, despite its creative output, is barely scraping by. Charlotte does a lot better than us per capita on the art dollar, and Houston is double what we are per dollar.”
“Atlanta does produce. We have so many artists, so many creatives in different genres and different demographics. But the part that is bothersome is that they’re not supported or funded.”
This lack of financial support has resulted in a reality where many of the city’s talented professionals, Harris included, often take on out-of-state projects.
“There aren’t enough jobs circulating in the arts market. Aside from dollars and consumerism, people buying art, a lot of our collectors go outside of Atlanta to buy art, and so the consumerism isn’t centralized. The workforce isn’t centralized because I take a lot of jobs outside of Atlanta because I have to, at least fifty percent.”
“I have to make it work because I have to. I’m a mom, but I also have a large network that allows me to work here. Imagine if I didn’t have the network, I wouldn’t have much work here unless I really hustle for it.”
Photo courtesy of Lauren Jackson Harris.
Although Atlanta is a creative hub in itself, it doesn’t necessarily have a centralized arts hub. Harris says that creative communities in Atlanta often operate in silos, with artists and audiences generally sticking to their familiar circles and rarely crossing into new ones.
“We have a really big issue with siloing demographics and communities here in terms of a lot of people don’t cross the bridge to another space. They stay in their group. They stay with their people. Those people become their friends, and they never go over to another area or another neighborhood. There’s a lot of siloism, and it's also because we don’t have a centralized space for arts, and when we do, it feels so niche for that neighborhood.”
If the ecosystem for making and presenting art is strained, then the infrastructure for thinking and writing about art is equally in distress. I was inspired to reach out to Harris after reading a series of remarks she posted on Threads about the role race plays in interpreting the work of Black artists and curators. True art criticism, she argues, requires an understanding of art history and a commitment to contextual analysis, not just personal opinion. Yet, as she alludes to in the text and emphasizes in our conversation, many skilled arts writers are underpaid or pushed out, leaving gaps that are filled by underqualified voices.
Photo courtesy of Lauren Jackson Harris.
“Criticism, one is dying, and it’s becoming…I’m not going to say dying; I will say it’s filled with voices that are just loud and not thoughtful. I think the influencer space, the need to fill a hole, the quick response, the accessibility, and the nepotism; those things are positioning people in spaces and allowing their voices to be loud because of that, versus having been an integral part of the arts and creative culture.”
“There’s an allowance of mediocrity right now that criticism is letting just scrape by because a lot of good arts writers aren’t getting paid what they want to get paid.”
“A lot of those people that are doing the deep work have created their own things, such as yourself. They’re creating their own journals. They’re writing their own books with self-publishing and may be getting paid later or using their platforms to write the thing.”
“When it comes to Black artists, criticism has done a disservice by not trying to understand the value that we put towards our curatorial processes. I think they have not done great service, especially just for Atlanta. I don’t think they’ve done a service in really thinking about the Southern Black person and having that come through and understanding it and then being able to talk about it in a positive way.”
Similarly fraught, says Harris, is our understanding of what it means to be a “curator”:
Photo courtesy of Lauren Jackson Harris.
“When somebody says ‘oh, I want to be a curator…well, did you study art history for four years like I did? Do you have a master’s degree like I do, or do you research art history? Are you reading about it? Some people don’t believe formal education is necessary, but I can’t go and be a CPA or a doctor tomorrow if I wanted to, right? So, why do you think curation is so easily accessible? Why do you think art writing is so easy? It’s not. It’s a study; I mean, even writing itself is its own major. And then you add art history to that. Chile, you gotta have one or the other at minimum, to me.”
“I always try to ask myself when I curate something…what is the audience? Who are the artists? What am I trying to say? Am I going to also steward exactly what they want to be said? We work together to get this thing out into the world professionally, beautifully, and artistically, so it reads well. There's actual care and attention in this, and I think that curators are lacking that right now.”
“I’m hoping that Atlanta will start to refine itself a little bit and be more intentional and thoughtful about everything that we do in terms of events, writing platforms, the people, and what we allow in and out. That’s my only goal for here in Atlanta.”
The bottom line, says Harris, is that Atlanta has the talent and cultural capital to be an art city on par with its music and film industries, but without meaningful change, that potential will remain unrealized. Harris’s critique of Atlanta’s arts ecosystem comes with a commitment to action. To that end, she’s actively developing a project to provide quality-paying opportunities for arts writers in Atlanta, with an anticipated launch early next year.
Photo courtesy of Lauren Jackson Harris.
“I’m from here, I work here, I want to thrive here, and I want my colleagues to thrive here, my artist friends to thrive here. I will never pose an issue and not try to find a solution, whether I delegate it out or create it. So I am working on a solution to come by next year, and it’s not replacing anybody, it’s just building an opportunity for writers to write for quality pay.”
“We have a lot of visual artists here. So many who just want money and want to have a thriving career. We have the same ten curators, but where can we curate? The writers are the same. We have to invite writers from other voices to come in and write about it. We need to find new people.”
“The thing is with Atlanta, if you continue to be quiet about the thing, it will never change.”
Lauren Jackson Harris launched a Substack earlier this month to share more of her perspective on art and art books. Subscribe to “Stacked: Words on Art and Art Books” here and visit her website here.