Join Lexington artists for a panel discussion about the history of pop-up exhibitions and artist initiatives in our city. Participants include Becky Alley, Kurt Gohde, Rae Goodwin, Georgia Henkel, and Bob Morgan; moderated by Rachel Hooper.
Saturday, April 25 | 3:00-4:30 PM | 325 West Main Street, 2nd floor
This program is part of Temporary Monument ATL/LEX, a pop-up exhibition that brings together artists from Atlanta and Lexington. Organized by the Temporary Art Center in collaboration with 2nd Story and the UK Art Museum, in addition to cultural producers Daniel Freed and Katherine St. Paul Hill, and real estate developer Katie Kaufman, with support from VisitLex.
About the Panelists:
Becky Alley is a Senior Lecturer in Curatorial Studies and the Gallery Director of the Bolivar Art Gallery at the School of Art & Visual Studies (SAVS) at the University of Kentucky. Her artmaking practice in sculpture and installation is process and materials focused, often examining aspects of ritual, memory, and decay. In 2024, along with curator Samantha Simpson, she established Muse Collective/ blink projects, which develops exhibitions in non-art spaces—a rented truck, garage, and outdoor pod.
Kurt Gohde is a Transylvania University art professor known for his collaborative and community-focused projects. Working with Kremena Todorova, he created the “Unlearn Fear + Hate” and “Lexington Tattoo Project,” both utilizing language, photography, and numerous participants to address issues of identity, place, and social issues. His most recent art action took place on February 28, when Gohde orchestrated the recreation of a historic “meat shower” in association with the Kentucky Meat Shower Festival in Owingsville.
Rae Goodwin is Professor of Art Studio in the School of Art & Visual Studies (SAVS) at the University of Kentucky. Her interdisciplinary work includes, performance, mixed-media sculpture, and drawing; and she has exhibited widely and performed at/with the Queens Museum, Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, McColl Center for Visual Art, La Pocha Nostra, and Dimanche Rouge, among others. In 2024, she created the performance space, Portal, in the basement and backyard of her home in Lexington.
Georgia Henkel is a mixed-media artist whose work explores human and animal figures and issues of time, mortality, and the grotesque. She often utilizes significant personal objects from her extensive collection of taxidermy, bones, clothing, dolls, etc. Henkel was a beloved art teacher at the Sayre School for decades and has been an active participant in numerous Lexington art projects as well as educational initiatives in Havana and Baracoa, Cuba.
Bob Morgan is an acclaimed Lexington artist whose assemblage sculptures, photographs, and installations often commemorate people he has known and cared for. In 2014, along with Jonathan Coleman, he co-founded the Faulkner Morgan Archive, an organization that preserves Kentucky’s LGBTQ+ history. Morgan was the driving force behind Galerie Soleil, a visual arts studio and exhibition space that operated between 1994-2009. It was in the building on Short Street that currently houses the Mama Tequila Restaurant.
Rachel Hooper is a Lexington native and the Curator of the University of Kentucky Art Museum. She was Associate Curator and Cynthia Woods Mitchell Fellow at the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston from 2007-2011; and was a Visual Arts Curatorial Fellow at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis from 2006-2007. From 2018-2024, she taught courses on modern and contemporary art at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, GA.