Exhibition season 2025–26

The Athenaeum—the University of Georgia’s space for contemporary art—presents our 2025–26 exhibition season. Find more information on the exhibitions and artists on our website: athenaeum.uga.edu

September 13–November 22, 2025
Opening: Saturday, September 13, 4–6pm
Main gallery: Krista Clark: assembly
Gallery II: Steven Thompson: Ever Loyal, Ever True

Krista Clark’s (American, b. 1975) assembly is a site-responsive installation of new life-sized sculptural work: Clark’s studio practice is informed by the politics and poetics of the urban built environment and pushes the formal artistic boundaries between drawing, sculpture and installation through the lens of abstraction. Her sculptural “assembly” comprises a collective mass of hybrid humanoid- and architectural-forms in the main gallery, nodding to her recent interest in mining protest imagery on both public and academic spaces. Clark’s work prompts the questions: What does it look like when our relationship with the built environment is interrupted? How does this affect our understanding of how we occupy space and create a sense of place? How do these interruptions highlight how we then move, claim, perform and gather our bodies within the constructed landscape? How does architecture mark labor, care and ritual?

Steven Thompson’s (American, b. 1967) Ever Loyal, Ever True is an exhibition of recent work in our second gallery, concurrent with Krista Clark’s assembly. Both artists share an affinity to pushing the boundaries and definitions of traditional drawing through layering, erasure, and additive means, moving their work towards sculptural abstraction that commands a physical call-and-response.  

Seven years ago, Thompson began to make his own paint from powder pigments—gum arabic, ox gall, honey and glycerin—in order to get closer to the deep mystery of materiality.  For Thompson, materials are more than surreal. They are metaphysical objects even beyond their subatomic particles and remain impossibly open and yet furtive to comprehension. In recent years, Thompson, a symbolist by nature, has turned toward the rococo: sugary colors and a promiscuous blending of techniques fulfilling a deep drive to investigate material substance via elaborate structures that awaken his mind and soul through trance-like states.

Jan 16–Mar 21, 2026
Opening: Saturday, Jan 17, 2026, 4-6pm
Both galleries: Beverly’s Athens

Beverly Buchanan (American, 1940–2015) lived in Athens, Georgia, 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.

Curated by Mo Costello and Katz Tepper, and organized by the Athenaeum, this exhibition draws primarily from the artist’s friends, supporters, and caregivers locally. A rich selection of print media, drawings, texts, photographs, sculptures, autobiographical ephemera and research materials come together with several off-site installations to provide deeper context for the ‘shack’ works for which Buchanan is best known. This site-specific engagement underscores the inextricable connections between care, dependence, and place in Beverly’s Athens. Beverly’s Athens is supported by a 2024 Single Project Grant from Teiger Foundation—a private foundation devoted exclusively to supporting contemporary art curators. 

April 11–May 9, 2026
Opening: Saturday, April 11, 4–6pm
Both galleries: 2026 MFA Thesis Exhibition

Celebrating the 2026 MFA in Studio Art graduates from the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia.

About the Athenaeum
Opened in 2021, The Athenaeum is a 5,000 sq foot non-collecting contemporary art exhibition venue affiliated with the University of Georgia and the Lamar Dodd School of Art in downtown Athens, Georgia.

The mission of the Athenaeum is to support artists, pursue contemporary art and ideas with rigor and to serve as a flexible space that invites extended looking and encourages critical thinking. We are dedicated to presenting the work of major artists in the field of contemporary art as well as centering under-recognized and emerging artists in the commission of new works and projects. The Athenaeum operating support is provided by UGA’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, The Lamar Dodd School of Art and Athenaeum Support Funds.

The Athenaeum is open Wednesday–Saturday 12–6pm and always free and open to the public. The Athenaeum is closed on UGA home football gamedays. For more information and to join our mailing list, visit us online or in person.