Telfair Museums is fortunate to have Erin Dun as Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. 

This bright and articulate young woman earned her BA in Art History and English Literature from Emory in 2012 and her MA in Art History, Criticism and Conservation from the Univ. of GA in 2014 before beginning her career with the Southeast’s oldest public art museum as a Curatorial Fellow. She was then hired as Assistant Curator, later assuming the role of Associate Curator, and now Curator.

Meeting her at the Jepson last month, I am struck by how much influence she has wielded during such a relatively short tenure… In the museum’s store, her foreward can be found in the monograph Late Night Polaroids, Photographs by Emily Earl (Earl is the co-founder and Executive Director of Sulfur Studios and of the non-profit ARTS Southeast); she contributed to Seven Rivers Monograph, the first publication of American photographer Ansley West Rivers; and has several essays in 2021’s Telfair Museums: Curator’s Choice.

Meanwhile, in the Barnard-facing windows outside the Jepson, Dunn is responsible for the #art912Boxed In/Break Out shows (currently on display is the “N/um” series by City Market painter Tafy LaPlanche which I wrote about in my April 27 column), while upstairs she has co-curated the “#art912CONVERGENCE” show featuring works by 28 recent or current Savannah-based artists. She also organized “Elegies: Still Lifes in Contemporary Art,” which brings together 16 international artists  to explore Black identity through the tradition of the culturally and metaphorically symbolic 16th and 17th century Dutch still life genre.

Dunn’s research and keen curatorial eye has resulted in the stellar “Feels Like Freedom” show in the main Steward Gallery. It is the first large-scale museum retrospective of African American painter Phillip J. Hampton (1922-2016) who served as an influential visual arts professor, and eventual department head, at Savannah State College (today Savannah State Univ.). 

Dunn pays homage to his legacy through her writing in the accompanying catalogue.

In addition to leading an ambitious schedule of original and traveling exhibitions and programs, Dunn directs the development of Telfair’s growing contemporary permanent  collection with an emphasis on underrepresented artists.

I visit Dunn to discuss “Anything Goes: Contemporary Art and Materials” which hangs in the large Steward North Gallery and is inspired by the various materials artists have employed in their work – from roofing shingles to newspapers to buttons. 

This broad thematic context has allowed her to show a number of interesting pieces from the Jepson’s permanent collection.

She explains, “We always strive to have some of our modern and contemporary permanent collection on view in the Jepson Center. The way I think of it is that we always have permanent collection pieces in the Telfair Academy and people don’t really question it. So, it only makes sense that we make space for some of our modern contemporary works here, and present pieces that may not have been viewed in a long time in a new context.”

For this show, Dunn specifically looked at work that was catalogued as “mixed media.” 

“It was a fun chance to go through our works and really pinpoint what mediums were being used, looking at artists who use found objects, collaging  with unusual materials.” She reached out to living artists to clarify what they had used if it was not apparent. For example, the eight-foot-high Suzanne Jackson (b.1944) piece “Her Empty Vanity” is made from acrylic, mixed papers, canvas, panel, lace, mirror, sea glass, paper pulp, beads, and shells without the use of glues or resins, “and then you have an artist like William Christenberry (1936-2016) who’s using roofing shingles and advertising signage.”

Dunn feels this thematic thread of unusual materials connects artists across all divides: “across divides of geography, privilege, formal education, and barriers of access. I think it is an interesting way to incorporate a lot of voices into this exhibition.”

She is particularly excited to include the museum’s recent acquisitions by aforementioned Savannahian Suzanne Jackson and Atlanta’s Curtis Patterson. 

“This show is a chance for us to celebrate works we already have in the collection and those we’ve recently added. We are always growing our permanent collection and thinking about filling in these gaps of possibly historically underrepresented artists.”

Both Jackson and Patterson have important artistic legacies and are only starting to get their due. In 2019 the Jepson hosted “Suzanne Jackson: Five Decades,” the first retrospective of her work,  while Susan Laney and Melissa Messina have been instrumental in bringing forward the work of Curtis Patterson (see my February 16 column  “One of the Most Important Sculptors of Our Time”). 

Curtis was the first African American to earn a Master of Visual Arts in Sculpture from Georgia State Univ., has created numerous public art installations throughout the US, and went on to influence many artists, including Radcliffe Bailey (b. 1969) who is also represented in the show.

We discuss several other pieces: one by Larry Connatser (1938-1996) worked in flat planes of color with his unique and obsessively applied dots of colors that reference the pointillism of Seurat. Dunn specifically chose “Untitled #2184” from the Jepson’s extensive collection of his work because it incorporates a  functioning lightbulb.

She also highlighted Butch Anthony (b.1966), a self-taught artist from Seale, Alabama who creates work in “intertwanglelism” – his self-named style which he displays in his own Museum of Wonder, a drive-through museum in his hometown. Dunn says, “Untitled (#1, 165)” is a “really wonderful elephant head made of wood and metal, painted silver. I think its interesting to connect a work like that with a work by an artist such as Louise Nevelson (1899-1988) who made these largescale assemblages, where she would take disparate pieces of wood and then paint them one color, like this monochromatic black. I like to think how these same methods are being used across the art historical divides…

“Some of these artists may have been inspired by some of the bigger names in art history. We think about the collages of Picasso, or the combines of Rauschenberg, or the more conceptual art of Duchamp (like putting a urinal on view), and how those concepts are being reworked. And then there are artists who have no connection to that world at all. They maybe have not studied the work of those artists, but we can still see the same ideas.”

Don’t miss this eclectic, exciting show which includes religiously inspired works by  Savannahians Rudolph Valentino Bostic (1944-2021) and Ulysses Davis (1914-1990), and by Georgia’s Rev. Howard Finster (1916-2001). I personally am excited to revisit “(My) Precarious Life” by Whitfield Lovell (b. 1959) from the inspiring “Whitfield Lovell: Deep River” installation mounted by the Jepson in 2014.

I have also enjoyed revisiting the phonebook with cutout names and numbers pasted together by  Savannahian Addie Reeves (1901-2001), poignantly lying open to the page with the number of the late, beloved writer Jan Fishman. Interestingly, Dunn includes the magnificent work  by Marcus Kenney (b. 1972) “A Letter to Addie Reeves” made from wrapping paper, newspaper, matte, and photocopies which both references and elevates the  Yamacraw Village centenarian’s original creation.

“Anything Goes: Contemporary Art and Materials” hangs in the Jepson Center’s Steward North Gallery through May, 2023.

This article appears in Nov 9-15, 2022.