Rachel Boillot (b. 1987) Postmistress Ida, Sherard, MS 2013. Chromogenic print, 19 1/2 x 24 1/2 inches. The Do Good Fund, Inc. 2015-42. © Rachel Boillot.
Thursday, August 29, 6 p.m.
Figge Art Museum, 225 West Second Street, Davenport IA
Held in conjunction with the exhibit showcasing the magnificent art and artists within the vast collection of the Do Good Fund, a Last Chance Tour Night for Reckonings & Reconstructions: Southern Photography from the Do Good Fund will be held at Davenport's Figge Art Museum on August 29. The exhibition is currently on display thanks to supporting sponsor The Brian Pasierb Family Foundation, contributing sponsor Carolyn Levine & Leonard Kallio Trust, and media sponsor KLJB FOX 18.
Reckonings and Reconstructions: Southern Photography from the Do Good Fund represents a survey of the art and artists within the Do Good Fund's collection. Providing a scholarly investigation of southern photography since World War II, the collection highlights a wide-ranging group of photographers – diverse in gender, race, ethnicity, and region – through more than 120 photographs by more than 70 artists.
Over the past decade, the Columbus, Georgia-based public charity the Do Good Fund has build a museum-quality collection of photography to document and celebrate the ever-changing American South. This exhibition consequently asks key questions that identify and complicate conventional ideas of the “American South” and “Southern photography” by resisting retrograde tropes and instead projecting the enigmatic, ever-changing qualities of the region and its people. Do Good’s mission is to make its collection of more than 800 images broadly accessible through regional museums, nonprofit galleries, and nontraditional venues and to encourage complementary, community-based programming to accompany each exhibition.
The exhibition includes works by such renowned photographers as Debbie Fleming, Caffery, Rosalind Fox Solomon, Shelby Lee Adams, Sheila Pree Bright, William Christenberry, Chandra McCormick, and Gordon Parks. As Reckonings & Reconstructions navigates the interface between nature and culture in the South, themes of land, labor, law and protest, food, ritual, and kinship draw from historical legacies where despair and hope, terror and beauty, pain and joy, and indignity and dignity commingle. Providing a scholarly investigation of southern photography since World War II, the images serve as both a reckoning with the past and a vision for future restoration and repair. They confront history, take stock of it and emphasize the need for change.
“This exhibition offers a profound exploration of Southern culture and heritage, capturing the complexity and resilience of the region and its people,” said Senior Co-Curator Vanessa Sage. “These powerful images reflect on historical legacies and envision a future defined by healing and community.” Organized by the Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, the exhibition program is supported in part by the Wyeth Foundation for American Art, the W. Newton Morris Charitable Foundation, and the Friends of the Georgia Museum of Art.
The Last Chance Tour Night for Reckonings & Reconstructions: Southern Photography from the Do Good Fund will begin in the Quad City Bank & Trust Grand Lobby on August 29, admission to the 6 p.m. event is free, and the exhibit itself will be on display through September 8. For more information, call (563)326-7832 and visit FiggeArtMuseum.org.
