ATLANTA - On a recent weekday evening in this city's Midtown neighborhood, hundreds of people, including Stacey Abrams, the former nominee for governor of Georgia, and Andre Dickens, the city's mayor, came together for a celebration. They weren't there to campaign, but to commemorate the opening of an artist's gallery created by United Talent Agency, the global entertainment company better known for representing musicians and actors.
UTA's expansion into visual art isn't new - the agency based in Beverly Hills opened a similar space in Los Angeles a few years ago to show and sell artists' work - but its decision to plant itself in the South is just the latest signal that Atlanta's art scene is bustling and should be a destination for art lovers.
Arthur Lewis, the creative director of UTA Fine Arts, who has overseen planning on the Atlanta location for the past two years, said that the decision to open a UTA Artist Space here was an easy one. "We saw this as an opportunity to be where talent is," he said, "and service this incredible community." Lewis added, "It's one of those cities where culture is born."
But just whose talent will be promoted - artists from the South, or imports from Los Angeles and international cities - is a question. Atlanta has long been a home and a hub for music and, more recently, for film and tech. The city hasn't quite gotten national or international acclaim for its robust fine art scene. For decades, curators, artists and dealers have been told that to succeed they have to leave Atlanta (and the South) and prove themselves in New York or Los Angeles. Sometimes they come back. Sometimes they don't.
The timing of UTA's gallery opening here on March 22 was auspicious. In recent years the city's museums and galleries, big and small, have had an injection of new life, with curators showing work that feels both culturally and politically relevant. There's the High Museum's famed Driskell Prize, given this year to Ebony Patterson, for "striking work that commemorates the lives and struggles of marginalized people"; the overhaul of Spelman College Museum's arts programming, by its executive director, Liz Andrews; and the inaugural edition of Atlanta Art Week last fall.
While Atlanta's fine art scene has long been fractured because of the sprawl of galleries and museums, the lack of consistent investment and the pull for talent to leave the city, Donovan Johnson, director of the Johnson Lowe Gallery, said that this was changing, adding that this is the perfect time to be investing in the city's fine art scene. (Johnson's gallery does not have any business or financial relationship with UTA, he said.)
"There are people who are coming from other places who are willing to help uplift the community and UTA is a part of that," he said. "They saw something happening here with Georgia artists showing in other places." He checked off the local successes: "Victoria Dugger being picked up by Sargent's Daughters" of New York and Los Angeles; "Radcliffe Bailey's meteoric rise to prominence"; and Michi Meko showing at Kavi Gupta, the Chicago gallery. "Now, UTA is bringing artists to Atlanta and kind of creating a platform for them here."
'A chance for artists to work where they're from'
Tony Parker, the sales director in UTA's Atlanta artist space, who was born and raised here but left the South a decade ago, said that in returning to Atlanta he hopes to help remedy the steady exit of the city's artistic talent for bigger markets.
"I remember being on phone calls with my friends in entertainment, art and culture and they'd say, 'I'm going to L.A. for this meeting, I'm going to New York for that meeting,'" Parker said. "By coming here, we're giving artists a chance to do business where they're from."
Parker, Lewis and Bridgette Baldo, the director of UTA Artist Space - she is in charge of organizing and curating exhibitions - said that the gallery will show work by local, regional, national and international artists with the intention of attracting a wide array of collectors and visitors. Just how much of the work will be local is yet to be determined. Sales in the UTA space are split between artists and the gallery, but UTA declined to say what percentage of sales goes to artists. The agency is also working with artists it does not formally represent.
Johnson, the director of Johnson Lowe Gallery, said that although he is excited about UTA's arrival, among the concerns he has heard and shares with his peers is that UTA might fall short in working to promote Atlanta and Georgia artists and bring in only people from New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere.
"Is someone coming here to capitalize on all the work that other people have done" over the years, he asked, or to "hold out their hand and say, 'We're here to be a part of this community'?" Mr. Johnson said that he is optimistic that UTA's gallery, if used to elevate Atlanta's artists, will ultimately be good for everyone, not just UTA.
Lewis, the director of UTA Fine Arts, said that in Los Angeles, the agency has shown a wide-ranging group of artists and plans to do the same in Atlanta. The self-taught French artist Célia Rakotondrainy is scheduled to show in May, Lien Truong, who was born in Saigon, will show in June and James Williams II in July. In the fall, Antonio Scott Nichols, from Atlanta, will have his first solo show in his hometown.
"As the arts community in the city grows, it is important to us to support an eclectic roster of artists from different backgrounds who work across various mediums and perspectives," Lewis said. "These are the voices we feel will most profoundly resonate with Atlanta audiences, as well as the wider discourse of contemporary art."
UTA's leaders would not say how much money they have invested in Atlanta. The agency invested in research and spent the better part of two years in strategic planning with artists, collectors, dealers, agents and other players in the city's art scene, Baldo said. UTA also held pop-up exhibitions in a rented space before opening the new UTA space. "We really wanted to see what was happening here and what was happening in the arts community and what piqued people's interests."
Mario Joyce, an artist whose work was exhibited last fall in the UTA pop-up space, said that although he grew up in Ohio, showing in the South, where his father's family is from, was significant professionally and personally. The opportunity most likely wouldn't have come about without UTA's resources and vast network, he added. (Joyce is not represented by UTA, but he signed a consignment agreement with the agency that gives him four months to work on a painting.) UTA paid for the exhibition space, promoted his show, and dealt with the business of selling the art. The agency also created his wait-list. Joyce, who was initially approached by Baldo, said that the UTA team serves as business mentors and that he felt they were invested in his telling of his family's story as well as in giving Southern and rural African American histories a place to be told.
"I was really surprised by how they treated me with such tenderness." he said. "The South has this Black heritage that hasn't really properly been explored and told, and we know it as Black Americans, but the big splash everybody had the chance to see was really special - and that was thanks to UTA."
Not just a gallery
UTA chose an ideal Midtown location, walking distance from the High Museum, Savannah College of Art and Design's Museum of Fashion + Film, and the Museum of Design Atlanta. The team intentionally built more than just a gallery: The building, which the agency leases, includes a lounge, a bar and dozens of offices with walls lined with art. The agency's opening is the result of strategic planning, research and years of hard work by Lewis's team, but it also owes to artists, curators, dealers and others, who have been laying a foundation leading up to this moment.
"There's so much talent in Atlanta and there always has been, but there isn't an annual fair or any major event that attracts the broader art industry to town to see for themselves what Atlanta has to offer," said Kendra Walker, an art adviser in Atlanta and the founder of Atlanta Art Week. She added that she created Atlanta Art Week partly to package art to people in the city and to out-of-towners who might not know what Atlanta has to offer, or who might feel overwhelmed by the sprawling location of galleries and museums. She sees UTA as a potential partner for making art in the city more accessible.
During its two-night opening in March, hundreds of people filed into UTA's inaugural exhibit, "The Eyes Were Always on Us," with paintings by Lonnie Holley, who said that he was thrilled to be showing his work in Atlanta, his home for the past 12 years.
"Art is an important part of the universal order, so for UTA to be coming to Atlanta and organizing and orchestrating different ways for artists to be expressive is one of the greatest things that can happen," Holley said.
Others, like Johnson, the independent gallerist, pointed to the demographics of the city and its long history of influencing culture beyond the South. "Atlanta is 48 percent Black, culture starts here," he said. "The rest of the world better pay attention to what's happening in Atlanta."
