Image: High Museum of Art, Atlanta
The High Museum of Art will host ‘Beyond Mammy: A Century of Art, Southern Memory, and the Ethics of Storytelling’ on September 10, bringing together scholars, artists and cultural practitioners to examine how Black history and representation are told in Atlanta. The public conversation will take place from 6 to 9 p.m. at the museum, with registration required.
The event is being presented in partnership with the Atlanta History Center, with both institutions marking their 100th anniversaries in 2026. Its discussion will focus on the ways cultural organizations and visual storytellers confront inherited narratives about race, gender and the American South, including stereotypes associated with the mammy figure.
The panel will consider two contrasting Atlanta-related subjects: the stories surrounding ‘Gone with the Wind’ at the Margaret Mitchell House and Simone Leigh’s ‘Cupboard’, a 2024 bronze acquired by the High Museum. The museum identifies Leigh’s work as a purchase supported by several funds and donors, including the David C. Driskell Endowment and its D. Lurton Massee Jr. Endowment for Contemporary Art.
‘Cupboard’ will serve as a point of departure for examining how contemporary art can challenge or complicate established representations of Black life. The conversation’s broader subject is the relationship between images, historical memory and public understanding—particularly how visual representation can influence the way the past is perceived.
The speakers are Dr. Stephane Dunn, Dr. Kimberly Wallace-Sanders and Carlton Mackey. Dunn is a writer, filmmaker, cultural scholar and professor at Morehouse College, where she co-founded and served as the first chair of the Cinema, Television & Emerging Media Studies department. Her work addresses race, gender and representation in American and African American culture, and she collaborated with the Atlanta History Center and Margaret Mitchell House Museum on the ‘Gone with the Wind’ exhibition in Atlanta.
Wallace-Sanders is an associate professor of American and African American Studies at Emory University whose research covers race, gender, visual culture, African American photography, Southern history and representations of the Black female body. She is the author of ‘Mammy: A Century of Race, Gender and Southern Memory’. Mackey, an Atlanta-based artist and community engagement director, is the High Museum’s assistant director for Community Dialogue and Engagement. He designs programs using visual culture to encourage public dialogue around social and ethical issues.
Tickets cost $10 for High Museum members and $23.50 for non-members. The museum is located at 1280 Peachtree Street NE in Atlanta.
