Walk into the Emma Darnell Aviation Museum and Conference Center on Aviation Circle in Atlanta right now, and the first thing you notice is the sheer volume of it. Works by women artists cover the space — paintings, sculptures, photographs, quilts, mixed media, body casts — a full accounting of what women make when room is given.
That someone is Tisha Smith, public art manager for Fulton County Arts and Culture and the curator behind “EmpowerHER: A Celebration of Women in Art.” The exhibition, which opened March 13 and runs through April 25, draws artists from across Atlanta and beyond, spanning disciplines, generations, backgrounds and communities. Smith built the show from a digital call for submissions, a curatorial eye sharpened over decades, and a conviction that the work itself, versus the resume behind it, should lead.
Since its inaugural year in 2024, when the show featured 70 artists, “EmpowerHER” has grown into one of the largest exhibitions of women artists in Georgia. The 2025 edition featured close to 160 artists. This year, the show hit 200. And Smith says the ceiling is nowhere to be seen.
Here’s Smith on what it takes to curate at this scale, the legacy artists who helped build the foundation, and why she thinks “EmpowerHER” is becoming something bigger than an annual art show.
With more than 200 Fulton County women artists in this show, how did you and your team approach selecting artists? What criteria did you use beyond ties to Atlanta?
So, it’s a heavily curated exhibition all the way down through the submissions. I look at them, and I identify what would be a wonderful addition to the exhibit. If I have access to the website, I might review it to see if there’s another piece beyond what they submitted for consideration, and then ask them to bring that. So it is just utilizing my curatorial attributes and bringing these women together through the work that they submitted.
Read in full at RoughDraft Atlanta
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