2021
In 2021, the Arts Council supported a successful submission by the University’s Willson Center for Humanities and Arts for a $1 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support community-based artist residencies at the Penn Center, located in the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor.
In 2020, The Arts Council deployed several innovative strategies in response to the COVID pandemic to offer Spotlight on the Arts. As part of the festival, Grammy award-winning singer Kathy Mattea filmed a concert exclusively for UGA Presents. Shelter Projects, artistic works created by graduate students and community based artists reflecting on their pandemic experiences, were also featured in an online exhibition during the festival.
Family Day is a special feature of Spotlight on the Arts that includes free performances, activities, demonstrations, and workshops that complement festival programming and exhibitions. In 2019, young people made collages inspired by the work of Mary Lee Bendolph, a renowned quilt maker and participant in the Civil Rights movement whose work was on display at the Georgia Museum of Art.
As part of the Spotlight on the Arts festival, 50 members of the Redcoat Marching Band traveled to New York City to perform at the historic Apollo Theater for “Redcoat Band Live.”
In 2018, the Arts Council spearheaded a bid for UGA to host the annual conference of the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (A2RU), an international organization that includes some of America’s most prominent universities.
A collaboration of conference keynote speakers, professor Samantha Joye and artist Rebecca Rutstein, coincided with an exhibition of sculptures and paintings at the Georgia Museum of Art. A popular wall-mounted piece from the exhibition, “Shimmer,” is now part of the museum’s permanent collection.
In 2017, Spotlight on the Arts continued to grow with the addition of the “4 minutes, 33 seconds” competition, in which students share their arts-focused research with the campus community.
In 2014, the Arts Council partnered with the Athens community to host a downtown concert. The concert, with all-star lineup featuring Mike Mills of R.E.M., Pat Sansone of Wilco, and members of the band Big Star, was organized by students in the music business program of the University’s Terry College of Business as a part of the Spotlight on the Arts festival.
The University’s Willson Center for the Humanites and Arts launched the Global Georgia Initiative in 2013. This public humanities program explores global issues of local concern in a diversity of contexts.
The inaugural 2012 Spotlight on the Arts festival brought the internationally recognized Blue Man Group to the Classic Center in Athens and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra to the University’s Performing Arts Center. Notably, the festival includes a Student Spotlight event during which student performers share their talents with their peers.
In 2011, the UGA Arts Council was convened by then Vice Provost for Academic Affairs Libby V. Morris. It is a multidisciplinary group composed of the leadership of performing, visual, and literary arts units, as well as other campus units that infuse the arts into their teaching and scholarship. Today the council is composed of 17 university units.
