Marcy Hermansader, Secrets of the Heart, 1983. Colored pencil, crayon, acrylic, mosquito netting, and thread on black paper. Collection Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA), Lambert Purchase Fund. Courtesy PAFA © Marcy Hermansader

Off the Coast of Paradise: Artists and Ossabaw Island, 1961–Now at Telfair Museums will explore the profound impact of Ossabaw Island—an undeveloped, 26,000-acre barrier island off the coast of Savannah, Georgia—on arts and culture in the United States during the latter half of the twentieth century. Cocurators Erin Dunn and Beryl Gilothwest will bring together work by individuals connected to the Ossabaw Island Project, an interdisciplinary fellowship launched in 1961, and Genesis, a cooperative, semi-sustainable community founded in 1970 for participants from diverse disciplines. The exhibition will also feature work by artists who spent time on Ossabaw Island after the programs concluded in 1982. 

Off the Coast of Paradise will feature works by thirty-two artists and will be organized around three main thematic areas—The Catalyst, The Terrain, and The Paradox—to demonstrate how artistic engagement with Ossabaw has evolved over the last sixty-five years. “The Catalyst” was a term used by Eleanor West, founder of both the Ossabaw Island Project and Genesis, to describe the island’s transformative effect on residents such as Harry Bertoia, Agnes Denes, Helen Hamada, Ross McElwee, Athena Tacha, and Anne Truitt. The Terrain section will look at how the natural landscape of the island inspired other artists, mostly realist painters working in the Midwest and Southeast. Finally, The Paradox will consider engagements with the history of the Southern landscape through the work of such artists as Suzanne Jackson, Sally Mann, Tyrone Mitchell, and Rashod Taylor, and will be brought to the present moment through a major new film commission by Allison Janae Hamilton titled Venus of Ossabaw. Hamilton’s film will be projected nightly on the museum’s facade, in addition to being shown within the galleries.

Genesis members on South End Beach, Ossabaw Island, Georgia, 1978. Courtesy Helen Hamada. Photo: Helen Hamada

Rashod Taylor, Marsh Land, Ossabaw Island, GA, 2024. Tintype. Collection the Prints & Photographs Division at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC. © Rashod Taylor

Erin Dunn is Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at Telfair Museums, where she has been a member of the curatorial team since 2014. Dunn has curated numerous exhibitions, including Watershed: Contemporary Landscape Photography (2016) and Feels like Freedom: Phillip J. Hampton (2022). Her recent projects include Frank Stewart’s Nexus: An American Photographer’s Journey, 1960s to the Present (2023), co-organized with The Phillips Collection (Washington, DC), and solo exhibitions by Raheleh Filsoofi and Anila Quayyum Agha. Her writing appears in the catalogues for Feels like Freedom: Phillip J. Hampton and Late Night Polaroids: Photographs by Emily Earl, among others. Dunn spearheads Telfair’s #art912 initiative, which promotes the vitality of artists living and working in Savannah. She was the recipient of the fall 2023 Margie E. West Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Georgia’s Lamar Dodd School of Art. She holds a BA from Emory University and an MA from the University of Georgia. 

Beryl Gilothwest is a curator and art historian based in New York. He is Deputy Director of Research and Exhibitions at the Calder Foundation (New York), which is dedicated to collecting, exhibiting, preserving, and interpreting the art and archives of Alexander Calder. He has collaborated with institutions all over the world on exhibitions of Calder’s work, including The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) (New York); Neue Nationalgalerie (Berlin); Musée national Picasso-Paris; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), among others. As a writer, he has contributed to publications such as The Brooklyn Rail, Art in America, and Degree Critical. He holds a BA in Art History from Vassar College and is currently completing an MA in Art History at Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY).

Essence Harden, Sovern LA