ArtsCriticATL.com

Catastrophe is the theme of Manifestation internationale d’art de Québec, Manif d’art 5, Québec City’s upcoming art biennial. But the citywide exhibit is definitely a boon to Atlanta artists Sarah Emerson and Katherine Taylor. Curator Sylvie Fortin, the editor in chief of Atlanta-based Art Papers magazine, has included them in the event, which will run May 1 through June 15.

Fortin intends to explore catastrophe in its various manifestations, from catalcysmic events to the subtler “shadow of the permanent threat of…

The Serenbe Photography Center, which launches with an open house on March 13, is more good news for metro Atlanta. The nonprofit center has a lab like no other in the Southeast, outside of academia, for traditional color and black-and-white printing as well as digital processing. It will also offer workshops and other programs. 

The core of the lab, which is open…

By REBECCA DIMLING COCHRAN

Art lovers who had considered traveling to New Orleans this November for Prospect.2 — the second installment of the hugely successful international contemporary biennial — will have to postpone their plans.

Due in large part to the current economic conditions and decreases in funding for the arts nationally, U.S. Biennial Inc., the organization that produces Prospect New Orleans, announced today that it has elected to postpone Prospect.2 by one year. The biennial is now scheduled to be on view November 5, 2011, through February 3, 2012.

According to Dan Cameron, founding director for U.S…

Clark Atlanta University Art Galleries’ display of its permanent collection offers the most comprehensive array of African-American art in town, including a goodly number of contemporary Georgia artists. Gallery director Tina Dunkley reinstalled the collection in August, and if you haven’t seen it, now is a good time because you’ll also catch “King Seppy’s Dream of the Tree of Life.”

The creation…

By JERRY CULLUM

Ron Hughes has maintained a varied photo exhibition program at his Composition Gallery through four exceptionally challenging years. That fact alone would be worthy of commendation.

Based on a nationwide call for entries, Hughes’ anniversary show (through March 7) is worth commending for another reason. Call-for-entries shows are, by definition, based on random submissions. Selecting from what was received, Hughes has assembled a geographically and stylistically diverse exhibition that feels distinctly coherent.

Philadelphia-based photographer Brittany Binler’s mysteriously lit nightscapes make the everyday trees and byways of suburbia seem science-fiction-like or sinister. Gregory…

By REBECCA DIMLING COCHRAN

With thoughtful programming, Julian Cox, the High Museum of Art’s curator of photography, has shown visitors over the last few years the ever-widening spectrum of the photographic medium. “Harry Callahan: Eleanor” gave us an intimate look at one of the masters of 20th-century black-and-white photography. We saw some of the best of contemporary fashion photography in the traveling exhibition “Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer’s Life.” Cox’s own tour de force, “Road to Freedom: Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement, 1956-1968,” highlighted photojournalism during that movement. With “Richard Misrach: On the Beach” and “Alec Soth: Black Line…