2019 Hammonds House Honors Honorees

Lifetime Achievement Award

The Lifetime Achievement award is presented to a nationally recognized and established artist, curator, arts professional or scholar with a lifetime of exemplary artistic accomplishment and significant contribution to the field.

Tina M. Dunkley

Tina Maria Dunkley is Director Emerita of the Clark Atlanta University Art Museum, where she successfully rehoused the University’s historic permanent collection, integrated it in the academic curriculum and created a seminal publication, In the Eye of the Muses: Selections from the Clark Atlanta University Art Collection. The Eye of the Muses tells the story of the Atlanta University Art Annuals held between 1942 and 1970, from which the collection stemmed, cataloging the 887 artists who participated and crucially enhancing our understanding of art by African Americans.

Vanguard Award

The Vanguard Award is presented to an individual or group who has moved Black visual arts forward by being at the forefront or through innovation.

Halima Taha

For more than two decades, Halima Taha has lifted and exposed Black artists and their work in significant ways. She has worn many hats - consultant, gallery owner, educator and author.  20 years ago Halima Taha released Collecting African American Art: Works on Paper and Canvas. This was the first book to validate collecting painting, photography and prints by African American artists as a viable asset and commodity. It took eight years to find a publisher. She was told that books about art needed to be associated with an exhibition, that black people don’t buy art or read books, and white people don’t buy black art. But she persisted. Over the next 20 years this book would become the primary variable, in conjunction with the National Black Fine Art Show, for Swann Galleries to establish the first African American auction category in the world. The success of this publication inspired the National Gallery of Art to create a Collecting African American Art Symposium and was a catalyst for major museums worldwide to pursue collections of African American art to exhibit, catalogue and travel. In addition, it provided solid market criteria for publishers to print more monographs about African American artists and collections independent of museum shows, which had not previously been the norm.

O.T. Hammonds Philanthropy in the Arts Award

Dr. O. T. Hammonds was a committed patron of the arts and artists. This award is presented to an individual or collective with a demonstrable history of philanthropic giving or patronage to visual arts institutions, artists or independent projects.

Vicki and John Palmer

Vicki and John Palmer, together, encapsulate an interest in supporting philanthropy in the city of Atlanta both holistically and with respect to visual art institutions and artists. In particular, Vicki seeks to improve opportunities for minorities in business through numerous scholarships and educational opportunities for women and people of color. Relative to this award, Vicki and John Palmer consequentially impact the arts landscape through their involvement with the Woodruff Arts Center and Spelman College. The Palmer’s notable contributions ensure diversity both in the field of philanthropy and in the future of the arts, business, and politics in Atlanta. 

Social Justice and Activism Award

Fabian Williams

Artist Fabian Williams is our 2019 Social Justice and Activism Award Recipient. His Kaeperbowl Mural Campaign focused our collective gaze on Colin Kaepernick and his fight against racial injustice through multiple murals which were erected all over the city of Atlanta on the eve of the NFL’s biggest night.

Fabian “Occasional Superstar” Williams is an Atlanta-based visual and performance artist best known for his fluorescent, symbolism-filled mural work depicting black cultural and civil rights leaders in modern and futuristic contexts. Williams is also known for his work depicting the seemingly state-sanctioned violence perpetrated against black men. After working for 13 years in the advertising industry Fabian decided to move to a purely expressive practice, where he had the freedom to express more political and socially relevant contemporary themes. Assessing and updating the Black Arts Movements’ centering of a racialized aesthetic, Williams’ vibrant art interrogates both the liberatory and oppressive forces at play in black American life. 

Emerging Artist Award

The Emerging Artist Award is presented to an emerging talent who has achieved notable accomplishments while still early in their career. 

Stacy Lynn Waddell

Stacy Lynn Waddell represents the next generation of artists working in contemporary art – her artistic process echoes themes relevant to today’s society as well as reflects an understanding of anthropology, art history and linguistics. Her artistic career began when she received her MFA from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2007. Since graduating, she has exhibited throughout the southeast region at museums such as The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University (Durham, NC); Atlanta Contemporary (Atlanta, GA); and The North Carolina Museum of Art in (Raleigh, NC) as well as had nationally recognized shows at The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (Philadelphia, PA); Project Row Houses (Houston, TX); and The Studio Museum (Harlem, New York). 

Artistic Excellence Award

The Artistic Excellence Award is awarded to an individual artist whose creative and superior accomplishments in the arts have elevated Black visual arts, improved the cultural vitality of the form and has had a profound and lasting effect on the culture.

Shiela Pree Bright

Sheila Pree Bright is an award-winning fine-art photographer nationally known for her photographic series, Young Americans, Plastic Bodies, and Suburbia. In the art world, she is described as a “cultural anthropologist” portraying large-scale works that combine a wide-range of contemporary culture. Bright’s work, 1960Who involved a street art gallery showcasing epic-sized portraits of unknown youth leaders of the 60’s who became members of the Civil Rights Movement, but are not widely known. The larger than life portraits on walls in downtown Atlanta humanized the faces of HBCU members of the Atlanta Student Movement as well as Freedom Riders from Atlanta to Connecticut.

Curatorial Excellence Award

The Curatorial Excellence Award is awarded to a curator who animates public discourse, offers innovative approaches in the presentation of art, elevates public understanding and advances the field through their work.  This individual may be with an institution or independent.

Faron Manuel

Faron Manuel is the coordinator of the Mellon Undergraduate Curatorial Fellowship and the Mellon Graduate Fellowship in Object-Centered Curatorial Research at the High Museum of Art. Prior to joining the High Museum, he was the Special Projects Curatorial Assistant to the Director of the Clark Atlanta University Art Museum, where he received his B.A in History in 2015. While at the Clark Atlanta University Museum he curated the exhibition Négritude (2015), that explored a French literary and philosophical movement within the African diaspora.

Faron also served as the Assistant Editor at Black Art In America, and currently contributes as an independent art writer and scholar.

Spriggs-Fuller Award for Arts Leadership

The Spriggs-Fuller Award for Arts Leadership recognizes individuals or organizations who enhance and strengthen the cultural community by curating, producing, exhibiting and advocating for artistic excellence in black visual art.

Franklin Sirmans

Franklin Sirmans has been the director of the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) since the fall of 2015. Prior to his appointment in Miami, he was the department head and curator of contemporary art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art from 2010 until 2015. At LACMA Sirmans organized Toba Khedoori, Noah Purifoy: Junk Dada; and Ends and Exits: Contemporary Art from the Collections of LACMA and the Broad Art Foundation, among other shows. From 2006 to 2010, he was curator of modern and contemporary Art at The Menil Collection in Houston where he organized several exhibitions including NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith, Maurizio Cattelan: Is Their Life Before Death? and Vija Celmins: Television and Disaster, 1964-1966. He was the artistic director of Prospect.3 New Orleans from 2012-2014. And, he is the 2007 David Driskell Prize winner, administered by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.

The Creators Award

The Creators Award is awarded to artists who create at the intersection of pop culture, iconography and the remix. They create or present visual imagery through non-traditional avenues, are commercially viable and introduce new generations to black visual culture.

Dwayne “Dubelyoo” Wright

Dwayne “Dubelyoo” Wright is an Atlanta-based visual artist and curator. Early in his career, he made a name for himself as an illustrator for hip hop magazines and as a designer for streetwear brands. For well over a decade, Dubelyoo has been curating the traveling art exhibition called Art, Beats + Lyrics. These urban art and music showcases provide an accessible experience for seasoned collectors, first-time art buyers, beats and rhymes-lovers and today’s social media selfie-taker. Dubelyoo’s goal for AB+L is not only to provide an exciting environment to view art but to exhibit works in which people of color can see themselves and connect with the whole experience.