Anticipation: 7 things I’ve got my eye on in Atlanta Art+Design for 2025

We’ve barely said goodbye to 2024, and yet it’s already time to start looking forward to what 2025 may bring. Here are seven things (plus one) that I am already thinking about as I look out at the horizon of Atlanta art for the coming year.

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Black abstraction

Major exhibitions such as Giants at the High Museum of Art and gatherings such as Atlanta Art Fair have recently highlighted representational art by Black artists. 2025 in Atlanta, however, is shaping up to be a year foregrounding Black artists making abstract art: Innervisions at Clark Atlanta University Art Museum; Amanda Williams at Spelman College Museum of Fine Art; Brandywine Workshop at Hammonds House; even individual artists like Sachi Rome at Chastain Arts Center and Quamaine Giles at Echo Contemporary. All will be showing what’s possible when artists leave the world of images behind.

The Supermarket

Atlanta does big, messy, genre-busting art venues better than any city. Think Apache Cafe, Eyedrum, Art Beats + Lyrics, the Goat Farm and the B Complex, as well as the dearly departed MINT Gallery and WonderRoot. The latest in this illustrious tradition is The Supermarket, 12,500 square feet of event space in Poncey-Highland that stands ready to support all sorts of wild and woolly art activities. A for profit space, The Supermarket’s major in-house partner is the nonprofit art organization The Bakery.

Artist Forum Atlanta

Speaking of sprawling, oh-so-Atlanta art events, Artist Forum Atlanta is set to return in late March at Echo Contemporary. This peripatetic, Gen-Z inflected, slightly rowdy art party features mostly very young artists set to launch careers into more serious art making. Personal discoveries here have included photographer Wisdom Warner and painter Hail Holtzclaw, whose solo show recently closed at THE END project space in southwest Atlanta.

Ryoji Ikeda at the High Museum

Speaking as someone who spent the early days of online digital art corresponding with pioneers such as Cory Arcangel and Auriea Harvey, I couldn’t be more excited about Ryoji Ikeda’s data-verse upcoming in March at the High. Ikeda, a Japanese-born, French media artist, incorporates open-source imagery from institutions such as NASA, the European Organization for Nuclear Research and the Human Genome Project into immersive data visualizations. I’m prepared for the full dizzying experience.

Public Art Futures Lab

The Artist in Residence program at Public Art Futures Lab is incubating some of the most innovative publicly supported, technology-based art in the city and perhaps in the entire Southeast. A program of Fulton County Arts & Culture, this facility has produced artists working with augmented reality, RFID tags, interactive digital media and more. 2025’s artists will be announced in March for residencies occurring through next February.

Anna Akpele, curator

Anna Akpele’s elsewhere is the most fascinating Atlanta gallery experience you’ve never heard of. It’s evidence that art experiences can be made brave and unique and important with the most modest of budgets and settings. Akpele is also a project coordinator with Dashboard and was the gallery manager at the very forward-looking Wish ATL, The Gallery. Akpele is among the best young curatorial voices just beginning to rise.

Art Papers: Atlanta Art Ecosystems

I’m a sucker for a good symposium that attempts to tackle very big problems. And Art Papers’ 2-day citywide conversation at Atlanta Contemporary promises to be just that. Featuring important voices such as Sarah Higgins, Laura Hennighausen and Roshani Thakore, this series of talks and panel discussions (which I will also be participating in) will ask big questions about Atlanta’s arts infrastructure and artist resources. And a few may even get answered.

BONUS: Anni Pullagura, new curator of American art at the High Museum

Pullagura just started at the High in November, having recently come from ICA Boston. Among her first major projects is a full re-installation of the High’s American art collection in such a way as to break down barriers between academically trained and untrained artists, removing any implication of value judgment and hierarchy. The result is not expected until 2026, which is why this is a bonus pick. But the change in focus could not be more timely.

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Cinqué Hicks is editor-in-chief of ArtsATL.