Exhibitions and programs 2026–27

The Athenaeum—the University of Georgia’s space for contemporary art—presents our 2026–27 exhibition season and related public programs, bringing together three exhibitions: Erin Johnson: The Measure Is Something Else, Megan Ledbetter: The Field (2022-2026), and Christy Bush: Continuum. The work across all three exhibitions is grounded in deep, temporal research practices, and an investigation of the archive–both personal and scientific–that focuses on nature, community, and care.  

Erin Johnson: The Measure Is Something Else
Main Gallery and New Media Gallery: August 29, 2026–March 20, 2027

The Measure Is Something Else is a mid-career survey of Erin Johnson’s work examining 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 15 years, 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. The exhibition traces how institutional attempts to codify the world are also barriers to our contact with its immensity and intrinsic contradictions. 

Megan Ledbetter: The Field (2022–2026)
Gallery II: August 29–November 21, 2026

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.

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 abandoned burial ground.

Christy Bush: Continuum
Gallery II: January 23–March 20, 2027

Opening Saturday, January 23, 2027, 5 to 7pm; press preview 4–5pm 

Christy Bush 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.

2027 MFA thesis exhibition
Main Gallery and Gallery II: April 10–May 8, 2027
Opening: Saturday, April 10, 4–6pm

Celebrating the 2027 MFA in Studio Art graduates from the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia.  

2026–27 public programs
Fall Lunch and Learn: Curator Tour
October 16, 2026, 12pm

Spring Lunch and Learn: Curator Tour
February 19, 2027, 12pm 

Closing symposium for our spring exhibitions
Keynote lecture with Erin Johnson
March 20, 2027

About the Athenaeum
Opened in 2021, The Athenaeum is a 5,000 square 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 to Saturday from 12–6pm and is 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.