Beverly Buchanan: Beverly's Athens

The Athenaeum at the University of Georgia presents Beverly’s Athens, the first research-driven institutional exhibition to focus on the more than two decades that Beverly Buchanan (1940–2015) lived and worked in Athens, Georgia. Long celebrated for her iconic shack sculptures and engagement with Black vernacular architecture, Buchanan’s life in Athens (1987–2010) reveals another, more intimate dimension of her practice—one shaped by illness, disability, local geographies, and networks of mutual care.

Co-curated by Mo Costello and Katz Tepper, Beverly’s Athens brings together lesser-known sculptures, drawings, photographs, print multiples, personal ephemera, and newly surfaced archival material. The exhibition traces the daily conditions that structured Buchanan’s creative life across the three homes she inhabited in Athens and foregrounds her deep engagement with the people and places that sustained her. Archival material related to Linnentown—a majority-Black neighborhood displaced by university-led urban renewal in the 1960s—further situates Buchanan’s practice of “Historical Preservation through Art” within ongoing community-led work around memory, erasure, and repair.

Presented in the Athenaeum in five thematic sections—Self-Representation, Rocksprings Street, Hawthorne Drugs, Beverly's Homes & Garden and the Study Room—the exhibition additionally expands beyond the gallery into a constellation of off-site installations in pharmacies, medical offices, and small businesses that Buchanan frequented. These everyday locations map the routes she traveled and return her works to the non-art spaces where many originally circulated, offering visitors a spatial experience of the artist’s embeddedness in the social fabric of Athens.

Timed alongside Shacks, Stories and Spirit: Beverly Buchanan’s Art of Home at the Georgia Museum of Art, Beverly’s Athens creates a city-wide portrait of an artist whose practice cannot be separated from the community, histories, and landscapes that shaped it. A closing symposium is planned for March; details will be announced soon.

Beverly’s Athens is made possible through generous financial support from the Teiger Foundation.

About the venue
Beverly’s Athens is presented at The Athenaeum, University of Georgia’s contemporary art space, a 5,000 square foot non-collecting contemporary art venue in downtown Athens that opened in 2021. The Athenaeum supports artists through exhibitions and public programming examining the cultural and social contexts around us, providing a framework for intellectual and creative inquiry.

About Teiger Foundation
Teiger Foundation advances innovative curatorial practice in contemporary art. Through its grantmaking initiatives, Teiger Foundation aims to catalyze positive change within the field through its support of curatorial projects that further new research, broaden opportunities for diversity and inclusion, and embrace more sustainable practices. Established by collector and art patron David Teiger (1929–2014) in 2008, the Foundation honors the spirit of its late founder who acted as an advocate for contemporary curators pursuing ambitious, innovative, and unconventional projects. The Foundation moved into a new phase of activity following the posthumous sale of Teiger’s collection in 2018–19. Between 2020 and 2022, the Foundation distributed a total of $8 million, supporting artistic leadership and curators at nonprofit institutions; curator-led coalitions and initiatives that support and challenge the field of visual art; as well as COVID relief efforts that helped artists and cultural workers in need. 2023 brought the Foundation’s first Call for Proposals and climate action pilot, both of which have now become central programs of the Foundation’s grant-giving and support efforts.

For more information, including press packets, contact Rachel Waldrop, Director and Curator, Athenaeum: rachel.waldrop@uga.edu.