With the sometimes-enormous works of art installed in its galleries, the Atlanta Contemporary can sound like a construction zone more often than you might think.
But in the week leading up to its reopening, it is literally a work site. Standing in the main galleries, one catches occasional glimpses of workers through the skylights.
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The Contemporary has been closed for the month of August. The art center has been making improvements to its space on Means Street. The reopening will be this weekend with its annual Art Party at 7 p.m. Saturday.
“We actually received funding for a new roof,” explains executive director Veronica Kessenich over the sounds of hammering from above. “Sometimes I think radical changes don’t occur that are perceptive to the naked eye, but are absolutely intrinsic to the mission.”
In this case, that means literally keeping a roof over their heads. This is a part of a number of capital improvements that the organization has made.
Construction is drawing on funds from a campaign started in 2013 to rejuvenate the campus. The Contemporary has been in that space since the late ‘80s. Long before that, the space began its life as a truck repair depot for Rockefeller’s Standard Oil.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have any of Rockefeller’s money,” Kessenich laughs. “That would have been nice, right?”
While the campus has been transformed since then, some of that history remains visible at — or below — ground level. Kessenich leads me down a stairway off the atrium into a small concrete room with a ramp leading up to the low ceiling.
“It’s the old coal chute,” Kessenich says, pointing out the manhole cover above the incline where the coal would drop into the room.
“Obviously, it’s cacophonous,” she says, her voice reverberating around the dimly lit space. “So there’s a lot of projected sound, light, various performances that’ll, hopefully, be in there because of how the space is definitely conducive to this echo.”
As we speak, works of art are already being hung around us.
At the top of the coal chute stairs, there is a mural of dishes and fruit, rendered in outline and bright colors across one wall panel. This work by Holly Coulis will be up through October, and then the wall will be given to another artist.
The Contemporary is looking closer at these small spaces. Kessenich tells me that attendance at the center is up about 80 percent since they made admission free in 2015. By doing quick-turnaround installations in these small spaces, they’re hoping to encourage repeat visitors.
“And when they do [return], whether the main galleries are up as they were before, all these other little project spaces will have new pieces that are up for a week, up for a couple weeks, up for a month, and then they’re gone,” she says. “So it’s very much so about the experience, about being responsive, being nimble.”
She isn’t kidding when she says “little project spaces” either. Being constantly eager to explore their campus, the staff uncovered a space during the 2016 Atlanta Biennial exhibition.
Kessenich leads me through one of the main galleries where work by fiber artist Anna Betbeze sits, ready to be installed. And then we duck behind the gallery wall into a wedge-shaped space. The walls are painted the color of mint ice cream. My shoulders touch either wall as we talk.
“When we were doing the Atlanta Biennial, and Dust to Digital wanted to do a sound-and-project installation space, this was a perfect little nook,” she explains. “And it’s a sliver, so it’s been aptly named ‘Sliver Space.’”
When we think of art galleries, we tend to picture white walls and wide open spaces. By opening these nooks and basements to show more artists’ work, not only is the Contemporary making greater use of its unique industrial space, but, as Kessenich puts it, they’re hoping to inspire the work that goes in them, too.
“That challenge, I think, really opens up their creative enterprises as an artist and their ability to think on their feet,” she says. “But also to be open with not only how their work can be explored in that space, but how people also then engage with it.”
With a new roof over their heads and more happening underneath it, the Atlanta Contemporary staff is hoping that great things will come out of limitations.
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