The choice is ours
Jan. 7 — It’s easy to think about exhibitions as finished things: walls filled, crowds gathered. What’s harder to conceptualize is the work that happens before the openings and artists’ talks. The planning. The calls. The tradeoffs. The hundreds of choices and decisions made that shape how we experience pieces in front of us.
That effort sits beneath this week’s stories.
One focuses on 404FoundATL, an artist-led collective that has spent years building a creative ecosystem through exhibitions designed to scale without flattening artists. The group’s choice to standardize presentation and prioritize shared visibility ensures participation is possible for many rather than the few.
At One Contemporary Gallery, director and curator Faron Manuel is marking the gallery’s first year through a series of deliberate curatorial decisions that center on artist intent, intergenerational work, and treating domestic life as serious cultural material.
Neither approach is accidental. What will be visible to us all is the result of love and labor shaping how exhibitions are built, how artists are positioned, how audiences are welcomed, and how sustainability is planned.
What are you choosing to see?
—Sherri Daye Scott
How 70 artists ended up on the same walls
🌌 404FoundATL’s “Dreamscapes: Cosmosis” brings together 70 Atlanta artists at Binder’s Limelight Gallery, building on a series that has grown from four participants in 2023 to one of the city’s largest artist-led group shows. We take a look at how 404FoundATL structured the exhibition, from pricing and installation to participation, and why those decisions matter now.
➡️ Learn how the exhibition was built.
Fashion meets art at the High Museum!
SPONSORED BY THE HIGH MUSEUM
👗 Experience Viktor&Rolf: Fashion Statements – a bold, breathtaking exhibition celebrating avant-garde fashion visionaries who blurred the line between haute couture and art. Only at the High, the exhibition’s sole U.S. stop.
➞ On view through Feb. 8, 2026.
Curating with care, one year in
🖼️ As One Contemporary Gallery marks its first anniversary, director and curator Faron Manuel discusses “Inner Views: Artists at Home,” his group exhibition reflecting on domestic life, emotional time, and artistic intent. His conversation with Rough Draft illustrates how curatorial choices can shape meaning, context, and continuity.
Art Happenings
🌺 Giant Flowers Art Installation at the Kimpton Shane | Opening today through Feb. 8. | Kimpton Shane Hotel. (pictured)
🛍️Castleberry Hill Artist Market | 7-11 p.m., Jan. 9 | Atlantucky.
🔢 Rosa Duffy: Uncertain Data Opening | 6-9 p.m., Jan. 10 | Hawkins Headquarters.
Post of the Week
🎨 @johnsonlowegallery is heralding the return of painter and educator Rush Baker IV to its exhibition program, welcoming Baker back for a focused presentation of new work following his earlier appearance in the gallery’s “Encounters,” group show.
➡️ See the post.
🖋️ Today’s Sketchbook was edited by Julie E. Bloemeke.