Women in Focus
Meeting minutes, 14 March 2007
Arnall Golden Gregory corporate collection, 171 17th Street, Atlanta, GA
The meeting was called to order at 7:00 pm.
We agreed by acclamation to hold the October ACP show at the Ferst Center for the Arts at Georgia Tech. Artist’s choice show will be at Digital Arts Studio.
The following 25 members were present: Frances Johnson, Gittel Price, Jane Conboy, Denice Lee, Leigh Kirkland, Susan Barmon, Teresa Sims, Lesley Price, Karla Mays, Karen Varsha, Theresa Sicurezza, Joanne Green, Shiela Robinette, Sheri Garza-Pope, Judy Kuniansky, Debra Booth, Marcia Blake, Vicki Hunt, Dorothy O’Connor, Jan Kapoor, Lorikay Stone, Morisca V. Shinsako, Cindy Michaels, Karen Styes, Biar Orell
Frances Johnson introduced Frank White, partner of AGG and art committee co-chair in charge of photography. He has been with AGG for 18 years.
AGG’s was ranked as one of the 30 best corporate collections in the U.S. last year. AGG, founded in 1947 was downtown for 35 years. In the early 1980s when the firm moved to 55 Park Place, the art collection was begun as investment, as decoration, and as a visual representation of the firm’s image. At the time, photography was still a more affordable investment than most paintings. AGG buys 2 or 3 new pieces each year; the exception has been that the office has moved every ten years; with each move the committee has been able to buy more than the usual annual allotment. In 1993, AGG moved from Park Place to Atlantic Center; in October of 2003, to its current location.
Photography is the focus on 4 ½ floors, with (another?) floor of twentieth- and twenty-first-century works on paper. Photographs are grouped by genre: half a floor devoted to photojournalism, the 17th floor to ‘modernists’, the 19th to landscapes and cityscapes, and the 20th to southern photography.
Once the AGG budget is set each year, the two co-chairs screen works for acquisition and bring those recommendations to a committee of five.
AGG has sold (at Sotheby’s) only one work, William Eggleston’s ‘Peaches.’
The works in AGG’s multipurpose room are by local artists (currently Lucinda Bunnen) and change quarterly. (Mr. White implied that he would be open to a proposal by WIF and/or WIF members.)
There is no current published inventory of the collection.
We toured the modernist and southern collections. Follows, a list of photographers, names only, in the order they were hung. If a photographer had more than one work hanging, as was often the case, the name is not repeated.
Angela West
David Orenthal
William Wegman
Paul Caponigro
Arnold Newman
Harry Callahan
Ruth Orkin
Paul Strand
Ron Van Dongen
D.W. Mellor
O. Winston Link
Yousuf Karsh
Robert Frank
Clarence John Laughlin
Mario Giacomelli
Aaron Siskind
Henri Cartier Bresson
Andre Kertsz
Ray K. Metzker
Robert Mapplethorpe
Diane Arbus
Sheila Metzner
Michael Szole Krzyzanowski
Michael Spano
William Klein
Michael Johnson
Imogen Cunningham
Bill Jacobson
Howard Bond
George Tice
Edward Weston
Richard Avedon
Edouard Boubaf
Elliot Erwitt
Toshio Shibata
Scott Peterman
Arthur Rothstein
Deborah Luster
Marion Post Wolcott
Keith Carter
Walker Evans
Irving Penn
Michael Johnson
Orajen Catledge
William Eggleston
Sally Mann
Mark Steinmetz
Birney Imes
Edward Clark
Keith Maltbey
Debbie Fleming Caffrey
Stephen Shore
Charles Moore
William Christenberry
Chris Verene
Jack Spencer
Jerry Uelsman