02/23/2025
Hi, this is Jennifer Niswonger-Morris ! 💜 I used to manage this space in my final years as a graduate student at the Lamar Dodd School of Art. I shouldn't still have admin access here, but when the management was handed over when I graduated, this page got neglected and has not been used since. I've been hesitant to delete it to allow for the archive of the artists who did show while these pages were in use. However, if someone else comes into the position of the space that wishes to gain admin access, I want to put my contact information here to allow you to do so! I'm unsure of access to the Instagram page, but it also seems to have had a brief life after leaving.
Each person running the space has had different visions for it, and I was saddened to see the things I had built and hoped to encourage quickly dissolved after leaving.
If I have one act on this page, it will be to describe what my aims were and envisioned during my time managing the Glass Gallery 💜
The university I came from for undergrad had a program to train art students in gallery work in every aspect and even management, and built within their gallery system they would have student exhibitions as well as visiting artists for the artists to work with. I was surprised at the Dodd that they did not have programs for art majors to develop skills and knowledge about galleries and that this region called for those with art history degrees to manage and organize larger contemporary galleries more so than artists. I was also surprised that moving to this region, it was the artists who were burdened with installation of exhibitions and curation rather frequently and not gallerists, yet many artists lacked training in how to do so when that duty fell upon them.
Before myself, I admired parts of Ellie Dent's approach with the Glass Gallery, allowing the space to serve as a place for artists to curate exhibitions of other artists for experience and to build a resume for artists wanting to go into gallery work that the art school did not provide outside of their application process for the general galleries within the building, as well as fostering relationships with other graduate art students in nearby programs through our exchange exhibitions.
I only came to manage the space by chance. The gallery fell into the management of graduate painting students from it being located within the graduate painting studios block. While this was a welcomed opportunity by some, for others in the graduate painting program it was seen as an undesired expectation, which became challenging when we would have artists traveling for installations (understandably so). Given my years of gallery experience and training, I assumed the role at first to not let the exhibitions we had scheduled fail, as passionate as I am about that work. It felt our obligation to uphold what we offered to those artists and to deliver what we promised. This space felt very much like a space that would only function and be viewed in respect of how well you thought of it yourself, as I feel most things are.
My final year, it was just assumed I was the director of the space who organized everything, even if that had not been true. All that was true was that I put my soul into preventing the space from being empty and not cancelling all the exhibitions others had offered our comrades as well as put more care into the promotion and visibility of the space.
I accepted the role, but wanted the space to serve as a place for people to use as they saw they needed. We had graduate students who wanted solo exhibitions for their works, we had students with installation projects that were rejected for every other site, we had artists working on community projects, and we had artists wanting to build their curatorial muscles and learn more about gallery functions in a low-risk no-cost space surrounded by other artists.
I feel for the most part, that year worked phenomenally well. I put out a call for all exhibition and installation proposals from any art graduate student, and I assigned each graduate student a time slot. The only catch is, for us all to have space, each exhibition would be limited to 2-3 weeks in length to accommodate everyone and give everyone that opportunity. Everyone but one artist agreed to these terms, as they wanted 4-6 weeks for a time they already promised to a larger project. To accommodate this, me and another artist shortened our slots to one week to allow for everyone to have the opportunity. We weighed out the tradeoffs for certain exhibitions with the timing of each event at the Dodd for their gallery openings, open studios, parties, or lectures on the schedule. We would also seek out musicians and others for performances during our openings or Dodd-wide events as well.
The whole year, everyone commented that it was their favorite part of the galleries in the building, and that it looked amazing. And the biggest part I think that allowed for that to happen was simply providing everyone with that opportunity and accessibility, especially for the work and projects they weren't able to put elsewhere.
This took additional work in the ways of administration for myself, making sure artists were managing their own exhibitions, helping with promotion, creating flyers for exhibitions, and managing the social media pages to feature each artist equally. The Glass Gallery along with the Locker 666 Gallery next door became my passion projects during that time. I would make sure they had any assistance needed for parts of their exhibitions they were unfamiliar with managing, but overall this went very smoothly and took the burden off of the painting graduate students who did not want to supervise installations and events and made the graduate painting studios feel less isolated from the other departments.
I was saddened to know that as the management transitioned, the new approach for the space was giving graduate students only a space to have solo exhibitions where they would sign up as an open space for their work. Given that I had previous experience, I can see how my approach could still seem overwhelming to whoever took up the next management position, and given that it wasn't a position you apply to be, you just assume the role within, I understand too how it would be challenging to continue for anyone not moving towards a similar career path.
While everyone has their own vision for the space, I wanted to list out my thoughts and approach as it had a lot of reasons and motivations outside of "a space for graduate students to have solo exhibitions" as I felt it served a greater purpose in the academic and educational setting that the Lamar Dodd School of Art provided for the graduate art students within the program.
We had continued the exchange exhibitions with Georgia Southern, and Georgia State while i was there, which fostered important and career building relationships with our colleagues at other universities. We hosted other exhibitions outside of the university system with them that included local contemporary galleries, and have been supportive within our careers for each other years later. Many of them winning prestigious awards, managing collectives, and working at top ranked programs themselves. These are friendships you are glad you fostered early, and I am grateful how supportive the energy has continued even as I've gone to a very different career outside of galleries and academia since.
I was heartbroken to see that all the documentation on the social media pages of the exchange exhibitions with the graduate art programs was removed. (My only guess being that the art school sees them as competing programs, and not the benefit of the camaraderie between them for the graduate students involved?). Heartbroken to look to this as one of the simplest yet most successful practices in the spaces I have worked or managed, and then to have to explain to my audience as I was giving a lecture about the practice that it had unfortunately been removed.
I had sat by accepting that the gallery will change depending on the goals those passing through wish to gain from the resource, but then heartbroken to see the removal of some of the great things we accomplished that stood outside of self-promotion and exhibition history and focused more on community, camaraderie, support for each other within the groups using the exhibition space, and making sure we all had a chance to push ourselves to the next level, all while we stood there together.
Maybe this post will never be seen, maybe the gallery doesn't even function as a gallery anymore? But the desire for us all to help each other create a system of support and share our knowledge to increase our access to resources is still there for me, and I will leave this here.
And maybe someone will read it, and feel a different way about the spaces they have been fortunate to find themselves within, or even managing, as well as the greater ways they may have the opportunity to foster non-competitive communal support and change.
Thank you for reading 💜
