Leia’s Lens: What Melissa Messina’s appointment reveals about the Atlanta Art Fair

The Atlanta Art Fair (AAF) is set to return to Pullman Yards from September 25 to September 28. Though still several months away, the planning for this year’s edition is well underway. Part of the process involves selecting this year’s guest curator.

In its inaugural edition, the AAF hosted 60 galleries, had an advisory board of local arts professionals, created multiple cultural partnerships who were given a booth in the fair and welcomed 3,000 visitors to Pullman Yards on opening night alone. The event was well received and garnered national and international attention from The Art Newspaper, Vanity Fair, Artsy and Hyperallergic, among others.

On May 9, AAF announced that Melissa Messina — curator of the Mildred Thompson Estate — has selected three female artists to create specific installations for the fair later this year: Sonya Yong James, Vadis Turner and Krista Clark. 

The prestigious position of guest curator for AAF is surely highly coveted and auspicious, with the chosen individual becoming an integral part of the creative vision for the Fair. Messina has decades of experience as a curator, yet I couldn’t help but wonder: Is she the absolute best choice for the job?

Messina has a long history in arts administration. As seen in her bio on the Mildred Thompson website, Messina previously held roles as the senior curator at the Savannah College of Art and Design and the national program director for ArtTable, among other prestigious positions. Her career is illustrious and she is well-vetted. In my research, I noticed many similarities between her career and the career of the previous year’s curators: Karen Comer Lowe and Lauren Jackson Harris.

For the last three years, Lowe has served as curator-in-residence at the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art. According to her website, prior to working at Spelman, she held directorial and curatorial roles at organizations such as the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery, the Tubman Museum of African American Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Harris, on the other hand, currently operates as an independent curator. In her career, she has served as curator of ZuCot Gallery, worked with the Atlanta University Center Art History + Curatorial Studies Collective — a program that prepares undergraduates for careers in the visual arts — and, in 2019, co-founded Black Women in Visual Art, an organization that connects, cultivates and serves Black arts professionals.

So here we have three eminent curators, each with national careers and local roots — the striking similarity which made me question Messina’s appointment. With the Fair only in its second edition, is it already falling into a formula? I wondered: Why not use the guest curator position to invite more experimentation or bring in outside voices? The answer became clear during an interview with Kelly Freeman, director of Art Market Productions, which produces the AAF.

Immediately following the conclusion of the first edition of the AAF, Freeman said that she began assessing the success of the Fair. “Right away, we needed to go back to the community and start asking questions. What can we do better? How can we do better? How can we start doing better right now?” 

This commitment to community, ensuring that the AAF is not just an event that happens in Atlanta but with Atlanta, is a throughline in the Fair’s organization and execution, as seen in the numerous collaborations it strikes with community partners.

Another benefit of the second year is that you have the first year’s participants as sources of knowledge. It is through constant inquiry and consultation of local arts leaders that Messina’s name was added to the list of possible curators. Beyond that, as Freeman describes, it was simply a matter of tapering down — who had the availability, who had the interest, etc — a process which ultimately landed upon Messina.

Although perhaps not the most glamorous process, hearing Freeman describe the reasoning for Messina’s appointment deepened my faith in the AAF. Messina comes into this role as someone who is universally approved by Atlantans. Without the local community’s support, Messina wouldn’t have even been considered. 

Ultimately, that is what Messina’s appointment signals to me: The Atlanta Art Fair intends to always be first and foremost about celebrating and uplifting Atlanta. And isn’t that everything we could really ask for?

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Leia Genis is a trans artist and writer currently based in Atlanta. Her writing has been published in Hyperallergic, Frieze, Burnaway, Art Papers and Number: Inc. magazine. Genis is a graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design and is also an avid cyclist with a competition history at the national level.