Middle Georgia Art Association reaches milestone year

There’s a lot of excitement going on over at the Middle Georgia Art Association gallery in Ingleside Village these days. The organization celebrates its 50th anniversary this year and its devoting all of 2017 to this historic milestone.

MGAA, the second oldest arts organization in Macon, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the promotion of the visual arts. The group presents the Mulberry Street Arts and Crafts Festival, Winter Arts Festival, Youth Arts Festival and Scholarship Program, art classes, exhibitions and educational programs for its members and the greater community.

Many types of anniversary-related events are being planned and several are scheduled already. The opening reception for MGAA’s upcoming still life exhibition happens Jan. 20, which coincides with their actual 50th anniversary date. There is no doubt that the organization will host a very special celebration that evening!

One of the group’s most well received gatherings — the past president’s luncheon — will take place Jan. 25.

The Winter Arts Festival, the annual judged competition that grants a large monetary reward and prizes, opens in mid-February. Considered by the organization as its “best of the best,” this festival features many artists who show their work at no other time during the year.

Visit the MGAA website at middlegeorgiaart.org or call the gallery at 478-744-9557 for more information about the organization, its 50th anniversary celebrations, and its full slate of art classes, seminars, workshops, exhibitions and other activities.

A Special Tribute

The Georgia College Theatre will present “A Song for Coretta,” a testament by novelist Pearl Cleage to civil rights icon Coretta Scott King. The tribute previously was presented at JD’s Drama & Dinner Theatre in Macon and it returns to Middle Georgia during the week that our nation honors her husband, the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

“A Song for Coretta” is an inspiring, fictionalized story about five diverse characters, all strangers, who are at the end of the long line of mourners waiting outside to pay their respects to Mrs. King’s remains inside Ebenezer Baptist Church. Even though each woman is there for a different reason, by the end of this one-act play, all of them learn common lessons of tolerance, acceptance and the strength to go on despite adversity.

See the free, one-night-only performance of “A Song for Coretta” at 6 p.m. Thursday at the Campus Black Box Theatre in Milledgeville. Call 478-445-4226 for more information.

This story was originally published January 11, 2017 at 8:08 AM with the headline "Middle Georgia Art Association reaches milestone year."