Building on Dana / Patterns in Space
Building on Dana / Patterns in Space (Feb. 7-May 19) explored the building’s past, present, and future through the voices of artists, activists, students, and scholars examining its built environment. It established the significance of the Dana Fine Arts Building in early career of architect John Portman and in shifts in the college’s curriculum in the 1960s; it also highlighted the challenges of access and inclusion in historical design and an evolving cultural context.
Alongside archival materials, the exhibition featured works from contemporary artists and designers who had reinterpreted visual and programmatic aspects of Dana Fine Arts to create a visual conversation between past and present. Works by Finnegan Shannon and Caitlin La Dolce explored our bodies’ relationship to space and advance equitable access for all. A site-specific textile by Roxie Fricton, following a legacy of such large-scale works in Portman’s buildings, re-imagined details our building through woven installation.
Model
The design elements used throughout the installation were created to reinforce the notion that constructing a building (and a curriculum) is part of a considered process.
Centered at the entrance of the exhibition and positioned as the first object a viewer would encounter was an architectural model of the building in its entirety, constructed of plain white foam core. The model’s presence visually explained that this was an exhibition about the building; its everyday, unadorned material suggested that it was made by hand. Original 1965 floorplans drawn by the Portman team, indicate the building’s beginnings in the form of a pencil-to-paper idea. Featuring the floor plans also allowed us to frame, in a sense, the original marks made by the individuals who envisioned and built the Dana building.
In the exhibition, this model was complemented by texts by our students, about selected areas of the building, inside and out.
Timelines
In this room graphite labels of titles and years designated two timelines: the top one situated the Dana Fine Arts Building, through centralized and enlarged images, framed by the entrance, within John Portman’s career (above) and Agnes Scott College’s construction and culture (below). The graphite repeated the material of the vertical additions in the central gallery and, with the curvilinear script, also recalled studio art materials and old-school architectural drafting techniques; it was also indicative of our pedagogical values and process-orientation as well as and the experimental nature and relatively swift development of this exhibition.
Building on Dana (August-December 2024)
The Building on Dana project unfolded in two rooms of the Dalton Gallery, as students in Topics in Visual Practices and 3-D Thinking worked together to scrutinize and analyze selected sites around the building, build prototypes in cardboard, and collect and assess archival materials, resulting in the four-floor model and timelines for the exhibition.
Our workspace/classroom was open to the public during gallery hours. We presented it to the Agnes Scott Community and invited guests in mid-December. For more details of our pedagogical adventures, please visit our PROCESS page.
We were fortunate to start our study with an exciting series of guest speakers, whose expertise on Portman’s architecture and related topics were an inspiring introduction to a worthy topic. You can find more information on PEOPLE and in PROGRAMS.
While we anticipated that a study of a Portman building would be significant for Atlanta, we are overwhelmed by the enthusiasm and generosity, the conversations and collaborations this project has generated. Please spend some time with our PEOPLE and PROCESS to get a sense of all those enriching and extending this project.
broken ground/falling light (September-December 2024)
broken ground/falling light featured selected works from the Permanent Collection of Agnes Scott College. Through the lens of the Permanent Collection, this exhibition explored interior landscapes and geometries of light. As we began to think about the ways in which form influences space through the Building on Dana project, this exhibition sought to reflect on space and time through the temporal nature of organic material.
Featured works included pieces by Kojo Griffin, Jenny Holzer, Abelardo Morell, Ruth Laxson, Pam Longobardi, Yasumasa Morimura, Joe Peragine, Steffen Thomas, and Larry Walker. The exhibition was on view from September 17-December 6, 2024.
