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The Arts Intel Report

A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler

Really Free: The Radical Art of Nellie Mae Rowe

Sept 3, 2021 – Jan 9, 2022
1280 Peachtree St NE, Atlanta, GA 30309, United States

Nellie Mae Rowe was born in 1900 and grew up in rural Fayetteville, Georgia. Her father was a former slave. When she was 16, she escaped the farm and married, trying to find a better life. Though she started drawing at a young age, she did not return to art until her second husband, Henry “Buddy” Rowe, died in the late 1940s. Their house, which she’d always called her “Playhouse,” became an exhibition space adorned with found-object installations, handmade dolls, chewing-gum sculptures, and hundreds of drawings. Rowe died in 1982, but her Playhouse remains an object of fascination. This exhibition presents photographs and reconstructions of the Playhouse along with Rowe’s drawings. —E.C.

Nellie Mae Rowe, “Untitled (Pecking Rooster),” 1981 © Estate of Nellie Mae Rowe/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo by Mike Jensen.