Notable 9 in art + design in 2025: Compelling exhibitions, curatorial feats and public art highlights

The visual artists of Atlanta continue to deliver, year after year, bringing fresh ideas, innovative concepts and excellent curation in spades. 2025 was no exception. 

This year, artists in Atlanta saw the return of some popular large-scale recurring arts events such as the Atlanta Art Fair, Atlanta Art Week, SiTE and Illumine, joined new creative communities that grew out of a shared love for art and contributed an abundance of evocative exhibitions ranging from fine art to folk art at galleries and museums across the city.

While it is impossible to cover all the amazing art we saw in 2025, the editors at ArtsATL chose nine stories that we believe illustrate the variety and strengths of the visual arts scene in Atlanta this year. 

The Beltline: How regular Atlantans created one of America’s biggest art projects
Atlanta Beltline

Writer Jeff Dingler breaks down how the once-forgotten and abandoned railroad tracks snaking through the city have been transformed over just two decades into the Beltline, a crown jewel of the city and one of the largest outdoor art exhibitions in the nation. Atlanta Beltline Art focuses on providing immersive, unique and iconic art experiences through open calls that have brought sculpture, murals, parades and performances to the 22-mile trail, an initiative that was inspired by pioneering neighbors and community members who desire to see the city’s creative identity reflected in what has become a living outdoor museum. 

Review: Gorgeous, exuberant Kim Chong Hak at the High
High Museum of Art

Describing Kim Chong Hak’s American debut at the High Museum as “sheer exuberance,” writer Donna Mintz details the celebrated South Korean artist’s colorful and joyful works that he has created in dedication to the beauty of Mount Seorak in Eastern South Korea since the late ’70s. Displaying a breadth of work spanning several decades, the exhibition’s landing in Atlanta felt especially timely when considering that Korean Americans make up the second largest and fastest growing immigrant community in Georgia.

Black abstraction embodies freedom in ‘Innervisions’ exhibit
Clark Atlanta University Art Museum

Abstraction was at the heart of Innervisions, an exhibition of mixed media works by Black artists that was on view at the Clark Atlanta University Art Museum in the spring. Writer Angela Oliver explored the ways in which abstraction affords Black artists a freedom to create not bound by preconceptions or associations. The exhibition, co-curated by museum Special Projects Curator Clarke Brown and artist and Clark Atlanta University Professor Jamele Wright, represented a form of homage to abstract Black artists in an appropriately prestigious setting.

Review: Jessica Blinkhorn’s Two Decades of Atrophy at End Project Space
The End Project Space

Describing the exhibition in exquisite detail, writer Leia Genis took readers on a journey of discovery through Jessica Blinkhorn’s Two Decades of Atrophy exhibition at End Project Space. A respected interdisciplinary artist, social justice activist and outspoken advocate for the disabled, aging and LGBTQ+ community, Blinkhorn has continued to create evocative and confronting artwork during her growing disability. Calling this retrospective a “battle cry,” Genis outlined how the defiance and confrontation in Blinkhorn’s work refuses erasure, instead allowing for an expansive vision not limited by physical disability. 

Review: Traces of an Unseen Fire resists presumption through new mythos at MOCA GA
MOCA GA

Sergio Suárez’s solo exhibition Traces of an Unseen Fire confronted writer and photographer Montenez Lowery’s perceptions of color, cultural associations and notions of good versus evil. In this piece, Lowery explored what he dubbed the “new mythos” created by the artist through references to Mesoamerican games, Greek mythology and other deities through bold color, symbolism and a complex, innovative installation. Capturing a world that is at once both ancient and futuristic, resisting presumption and instead lending itself to the viewers’ innate curiosity, this exhibition represents the artist’s adept ability to create an altogether new language through art.

Nuestra Creación brings artists together to celebrate artistry and culture in Ojalá exhibition
Echo Contemporary Art

Ojalá, which translates to “hopefully” in Spanish and “God willing” in Arabic, was the theme of this year’s iteration of Nuestra Creación presented at Echo Contemporary Art. Writer Mitali Singh spoke with Salvadorian artist Patricia Hernandez, who founded the annual group exhibition seven years ago about the power of art to unite and inspire connections between disparate cultures and communities, even when greater forces would seek to further the divide. Highlighting LGBTQ+ and Latine artists, the exhibition has grown in scope year after year and in 2025 featured the art of 60 local artists working in a variety of mediums, from sculpture to painting and photography to fiber. “It’s been a very overwhelming season, with everything that’s going on in this country. So with this, we want to say ojalá, offering hope that our lives might change or that our lives can open more doors to better opportunities,” said Hernandez.

Street Art Stories: 3 people who keep Pittsburgh and Adair Park shining
Adair Park

Writer and photographer Arthur Rudick, the creator of the popular Atlanta Street Art Map, which operates in the form of an Instagram account and interactive website, has been tracking the murals, graffiti and style writing seen on the public walls of Atlanta since 2017. In his Street Art Stories series, Rudick often dives deep into the groups of artists who come together to create new works through mural festivals and similar curated events. Other times, Rudick outlines the overlapping independent efforts of artists to add public art throughout neighborhoods, providing insight into the history of a community and the effects of artists on those who reside there, such as is the case with Adair Park. Rudick explains in detail how the neighborhood rebounded from a slow decline, in part due to the infusion of public art and creative businesses that painted life back into the community. 

Grass, Glitter and Gingham: Victoria Dugger confronts the Southern Gothic in Must Be Nice
Hudgens Center for Art & Learning

As a figure, the ever-smiling and complacent “mammy” has long been used as a tool of oppression against Black people, particularly in the American South. That all changed when award-winning Black and disabled artist Victoria Dugger brought the mammy to life in her solo show Must Be Nice at the Hudgens Center for Art & Learning this fall. Through words and photographs, Montenez Lowery illustrated how Dugger reclaims the figure into a complex character that insists on being witnessed rather than erased. Describing the show as unfolding with “quiet violence,” Lowery detailed how the artist’s vision and talent raised questions and arrested him through motifs, symbolism and instantly recognizable Americana. 

The prolific profundities of Howard Finster and Harry Underwood in The Art of Belief
The Sun ATL

The intersection of folk art and fine art is a tricky one. For many self-taught folk artists, a fine art gallery is an unfamiliar space to show their work; they opt instead to decorate spaces in the public such as roadsides and telephone poles. At The Sun ATL, one of Atlanta’s newest galleries, located in Atlanta’s historic Sweet Auburn District, The Art of Belief: Howard Finster and Harry Underwood paid homage to two prolific Georgia artists in an exhibition this fall. While the artists’ inspirations differ, the works shared a clear conviction for the power of the written word as evidenced by their evocative and iconic artworks seen in this one-of-a-kind exhibition.