Southeast’s Largest Outdoor Art Gallery Now Open in Midtown Atlanta
06/24/2024
BY BRIAN CARR
Midtown Alliance, the nonprofit organization dedicated to improving Atlanta’s most walkable neighborhood, today announced the opening of the Southeast’s Largest Outdoor Art Gallery, featuring more than 200 works from talented professional and amateur artists displayed on light pole banners along Peachtree Street and other thoroughfares.
Recognized as Atlanta’s heart of the arts, Midtown hosts the largest concentration of arts and cultural venues in the South, attracting some 7M visitors annually. Midtown is also ground zero for public art in the city, where nearly 70 murals and sculptures on view in the outdoor spaces between buildings accentuate the district’s wide, accessible, tree-lined sidewalks. Public art invites discovery and delights people as they explore their city on foot.
Midtown Alliance’s work to raise the district’s profile as a place where art is celebrated and created has yielded many wins for the city in recent years. The organization manages an artist residency program in partnership with commercial property owners, a robust schedule of free community events and programming built around performing arts, rotating public art installations and public gathering spaces decked out with compelling art.
"We value public art because it’s available to everyone who comes to Midtown," said Zach McClellan, graphic designer at Midtown Alliance. "Now, Midtown Alliance has extended the public art experience to outdoor street banners featuring work from amazing local artists. We’re excited to invite metro Atlantans and visitors alike to come to Midtown, walk around and enjoy art everywhere."
Following a call for entries in early-2024, Midtown Alliance received hundreds of submissions from local artists and some outside Atlanta. The artists range from practicing professionals to hobbyists and students. Midtown Alliance convened a juried competition to select art for the program. Featured works shown on the banners range from oil paintings and photography to mixed media and illustration.
This latest extension of public art arrives just in time for the 2024 AJC Peachtree Road Race, which welcomes tens of thousands of runners and spectators to the district on July 4. Midtown Alliance plans to keep the street banners up for roughly one year before assessing the gallery’s future direction and rotating in new artwork. The decommissioned vinyl banners will then be gifted to the individual artists that were featured in the outdoor art gallery.