• The Museum is open August 17 - December 3, 2022 Wed. - Sat., 12pm-5pm
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Lava Thomas: Homecoming
Through her immersive drawing installations and painstaking attention to detail, Lava Thomas creates opportunities to celebrate the beauty of African American life. Lava Thomas: Homecoming brings three bodies of her work together for the first time, Looking Back and Seeing Now (2015–2021), Mugshot Portraits: Women of the Montgomery Bus Boycott (2018–), and Decatur (2022). These works demonstrate Thomas’s dedication to exploring personal and cultural narratives of survival and bravery against the odds. The visual representation of the Mugshot Portraits offers a different framework for looking at the women boycotters. It is an opportunity to see the women who led and participated in the boycott revered in a place of honor instead of within the justice system that criminalized their stand for equality. Looking Back and Seeing Now and Decatur are based on Thomas’s exploration of her family’s archival materials. Like the Mugshot Portraits, these works visualize the importance of photography, portraiture, and history, further demonstrating her commitment to making the past part of the present. Generous support for this exhibition is provided by The Wish Foundation.

EXPERIENCE

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ENGAGE

HIGHLIGHTS

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Tête-à-Tête is the Museum’s latest public program series that features intimate conversations with artists, alumnae, and arts leaders who have helped shape the Spelman College Collection, including its 10th President Mary Schmidt Campbell.

Be Your Own Muse

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Be Your Own Muse, the Museum’s original podcast series, highlights Black women cultural producers. Check out our entire library on SoundCloud and Apple Podcasts.
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The Museum organizes a host of public programs such as Archiving Identity & Preserving Our Image. Explore the archive of the Museum’s lectures, gallery walks, workshops, family days, and much more and relive the excitement again and again.

UPCOMING PROGRAMS

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IN THE NEWS

What Our Visitors Say

From our
"Tell Us What You Think" wall.

It has a calming aura and it encourages me to be reflective and introspective.
- Museum Visitor
I enjoy celebrating blackness!!
- Museum Visitor
I enjoyed spending time in the Museum with my mom and witnessing the power of discovering and seeing ourselves in these powerful images together. It was exactly what I needed.
- Museum Visitor
I thoroughly enjoy witnessing Spelman students experiencing these images for the first time. The invitation to interact has also elicited glee, smiles, laughter, and sustained interest and attention, which is a rarity these days. It is a Balm in Gilead.
- Museum Visitor
I enjoyed the paintings, they were very vibrant and they made me feel like I was at home, comfy, cozy, and creative. The artwork persuaded me that art is not just colors, shapes, and lines but it is a feeling.
- Museum Visitor
I like the fact that it’s so interactive!
- Museum Visitor

MISSION

To inspire and enrich the Spelman College community and the general public primarily through art by and about women of the African Diaspora.  

CONTACT

SPELMAN COLLEGE MUSEUM OF FINE ART
in the Camille Olivia Hanks Cosby, Ed.D. Academic Center

Mailing address:
350 Spelman Lane, Box 1526
Atlanta, GA 30314 29201

Phone: 404.270.5607
Email: museum@spelman.edu

HOURS

Fall 2022:

Wednesday – Saturday

12pm – 5pm

Masks are required. Please review Spelman College visitor protocols here. 

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