Lamar Dodd (1909-1996)

Courtesy of LaGrange College

Today would be the 101st birthday of Georgia artist Lamar Dodd. He was born September 22, 1906 in Fairburn and raised in LaGrange, Georgia. The New Georgia Encyclopedia provides an overview of his life and artistic career. You can also find his birthday marked on “This Day in Georgia History” at the GeorgiaInfo site.

Carnival at Night (1939), Courtesy of Lamar Dodd Art Center, LaGrange College

Dodd left Georgia as a youth to study in New York, but would return and take a position with the University of Georgia (UGA). He would eventually lead the art department at UGA from 1938 until 1973. In 1996, the art school was renamed the “Lamar Dodd School of Art” in his honor (a more in depth account of his work with the art school can be found here). The Lamar Dodd Art Center, part of LaGrange College, is also named in his honor.

A photograph  of his childhood home in LaGrange can be found in the Troup County Digital Archives Project Photograph Database and in the Hubert Bond Owens and John Linley Image Collections at the Owens Library. And finally, you can read about Lamar Dodd in Thomas Reed’s The History of the University of Georgia (Chapter 16). A manuscript page of the chapter titled “Department of Art, Lamar Dodd” is viewable through an online collection from the Hargrett Library at UGA.

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1895 Cotton States Exposition – The Legacy

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People gathered in Piedmont Park during the Cotton States and International Exposition. Image Courtesy of the Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center.

Piedmont Park is today a refuge in the middle of Atlanta – providing a place to relax in the midst of a busy city – but it was once the location of one of the most widely touted exhibitions in the state’s history. This Friday marks the 115th anniversary of the 1895 Cotton States and International Exposition. The 1895 Exposition was the event at which Booker T. 3d vr headset Washington gave his “Atlanta Compromise” address, regarded as one of the most significant speeches in American history. A leading educator, Washington had lobbied for the exposition in Atlanta in order to highlight social and economic advances made in the South. His speech addressed the “Negro problem” and called for whites and blacks to take responsibility for improving relations between the races, while stressing that blacks should work within current systems for advancement. More on the speech, and the controversy it created among African American intellectuals, can be found in the New Georgia Encyclopedia.  In 1904, the city of Atlanta purchased Piedmont Park from the Piedmont Park Exposition Company and extended the city limits north to include the park.

Elevated view of the grounds as seen from the Phoenix Wheel ride. Image Courtesy of the Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center.

The Fred L. Howe Cotton States and International Exposition photographs, 1895 collection (held by the Atlanta History Center) contains dozens of photographs that document the exposition, which included 25 buildings, a lake and fountains. In addition to showcasing the latest in transportation, manufacturing, agriculture and other areas, there were rides and midway amusements and an exhibition of some 1,000 works of fine art.

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