Material Georgia, 1733-1900

de Dale L. Couch

"A generation ago, few people thought much of Georgia decorative arts, but 20 years of hard work by the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia have changed that mistaken impression. The museum presented the first formal exhibition of Georgia decorative arts in 1975, and other museums in the state followed suit. In 2000, the museum opened the Henry D. Green Center for the Study of the Decorative Arts. The center organizes a symposium held every other year to present and publish research on the decorative arts that is among the best attended events of its kind. To celebrate the 20-year anniversary of the Green Center, the museum has organized the exhibition "Material Georgia 1733 - 1900: Two Decades of Scholarship" (on view November 16, 2019, through March 15, 2020), which this catalogue accompanies. This exhibition takes a comprehensive look at Georgia's diverse contributions to early decorative arts and summarizes the scholarship that has been done in the 20 years since the Green Center's founding. It focuses on revealing new discoveries made in the field, pointing a way forward and making the case Georgia can hold its own against any other state in terms of the quality of its decorative arts"--