Our Golden Stories: Curating Culture Through Art at UNG

Our Golden Stories is the title of an upcoming art exhibition to be held at the Library and Technology Center in March and April 2025. This presentation will discuss our research as exhibition curators. Artworks dating from 1885 to the present and drawn from the former collections of North Georgia College & State University (NGCSU) and Gainesville State College (GSC) are included in our research and exhibition. These were privately collected by the late James and Francis Mathis, who were pivotal in the foundation of GSC, and purchased through awards, donated by former NGCSU faculty, or created by UNG alumni. We have approached the artworks and our research considering the influence of the former colleges on the surrounding community, on the culture and history of the Appalachian region, and on the North Georgia region. By thematically analyzing each work, researching the lives and legacies of each artist through newspaper articles and obituaries, and initiating meaningful conversations with the living artists, we are mining out the impact of UNG on the development of regional artistic communities. Drawing from the selected works, we have developed shared subthemes titled “golden light,” “radiant culture,” “luminous legends,” and “golden memories,” reinforcing the core theme of the exhibition, “our golden stories.” Through this approach, art originating from the two former colleges is unified like never before into a singular curated exhibition that integrates our shared culture and history.