Georgia on Our Minds: Exploring Atlanta, Athens, Madison, and Roswell

The Spring 2026 Symposium in Atlanta, with optional tours to Athens, Madison, Roswell, and Marietta, was a truly magical and memorable experience. The architecture, the museum collections, the expert curators who shared their insights, and the friends who opened their homes made this program one of the richest itineraries yet.

Amazing Athens

The two-day Pre-Symposium Optional Tour focused on the Georgia Piedmont, starting in Athens, established in 1805 to host the University of Georgia. The Church-Waddel-Brumby House serves as the Athens Welcome Center and is regarded as Athens’s oldest residence. The house was built c. 1820 by the Peck brothers for Alonzo Church, who was later appointed president of the University of Georgia. The T.R.R. Cobb House, named for Thomas Reade Rootes Cobb, was originally constructed in 1834 with later additions. The Greek Revival 1844 Taylor Grady House features 13 fluted Doric columns, said to commemorate the original 13 colonies.

Athens’s Porcelain and Decorative Arts Museum at the State Botanical Garden of Georgia is not to be missed. The museum contains eight galleries featuring objects that Deen Day Sanders collected over the past 50 years, spanning from 16th-century porcelain to contemporary work. An evening reception at the incredible 1860 Henry G. Wright House and farm, the home of Cindy and Roger Bregenzer, rounded out a lovely day! 

Magnificent Madison

The Pre-Tour’s second day began in Madison, GA, established in 1809 and widely recognized as one of the best-preserved Antebellum towns in the state. The Romanesque Revival Madison-Morgan Cultural Center was built in 1895 to serve as one of the first graded public schools in the Southeast. Tours of the c. 1830s Hilltop and the c. 1890s Walton’s White Lily illustrated how collectors live with the antiques they love in historic properties. Lunch at the 1811 Heritage Hall was followed by a visit to Cedar Lane Farm, an 1830s Plantation Plain-style house, surrounded by a beautiful landscape. As the optional tour came to a close, our group headed to Atlanta to start the Main Symposium!

Main Symposium in Atlanta

After welcoming remarks from Decorative Arts Trust Executive Director Matthew Thurlow and Board Vice President Nancy Mansfield (an Atlanta native), Dale Couch, Curator of Decorative Arts at the Georgia Museum of Art (retired), educated members about Piedmont material culture with the Jonathan L. Fairbanks Lecture titled Collecting Georgia: Early Decorative Arts and Craft from Hearth to Parlor. A convivial reception followed, generously sponsored by Brunk Auctions, at the Tesserae, the Tess Hotel’s rooftop restaurant.

The Atlanta History Center (AHC) was our host at the beginning of the first full day of the Symposium on Friday. F. Sheffield Hale, the AHC’s President & Chief Executive Officer, welcomed us to this impressive campus. Barbara Hyde, Shutze Scholar and Keeper of the Goodrum House, introduced one of Atlanta’s most important early-20th-century architects through the lecture Something to Last the Years: The Architecture of Philip Trammell Shutze in the South. We then explored the AHC’s notable offerings: the 1928 Swan House designed by Shutze, the Goizueta Gardens, the Shutze Ceramics Galleries, collections storage, and the Cyclorama of the Battle of Atlanta.

After lunch at the pleasant Trinity Presbyterian Church, the day continued with curator-led tours of the High Museum of Art’s American art and ceramics galleries and the chance to admire First Presbyterian Church’s stained glass windows designed by Tiffany Studios, D’Ascenzo Studios, and Willet Stained Glass Studios.

The second day of the Symposium featured visits to the Shutze-designed 1929 Goodrum House with Barbara Hyde, who highlighted the impressive wood carving by Herbert Millard and murals by Allyn Cox and Athos Menaboni. Architect and historian Jonathan LaCrosse led a parallel tour of the gardens and landscape surrounding the house. With the help of Trust Governor Brock Jobe, guests enjoyed Marianne and Ben Jenkins’s stellar collection of English and Dutch decorative arts. The afternoon was devoted to the 1908–10 Herndon Home Museum, a soaring Beaux Arts residence built for the family of prominent African American businessman Alonzo Franklin Herndon and designed by his wife, Adrienne. Our final visit was the 1924 Randolph Lucas Jones House, a rare extant residential commission of architect P. Thornton Marye, which remains privately owned and is stewarded through meticulous preservation efforts.

The Symposium closed on Sunday morning with four lectures: The John A.H. Sweeney Emerging Scholar Lecture, Feminine Arts | Fraternal Orders: Masonic Materiality in 19th-Century Georgia, by Kelsey Siegert, Curatorial Fellow, Georgia Museum of Art; From Play Mountain to Playscapes: Isamu Noguchi’s Playground for Atlanta by Monica Obniski, Curator of Decorative Arts and Design, High Museum of Art; The James A. Sanders Lecture, Georgia Quilts at the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, by Lea C. Lane, Curator, Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts; and Georgia (Folk Pottery) On My Mind by Dr. John A. Burrison, Regents Professor of English and Director of the Folklore Curriculum, Georgia State University.

Remarkable Roswell and Marvelous Marietta

Following the Symposium’s close, some members selected to travel on to Roswell and Marietta to experience more standout Georgia sites. Over lunch at downtown Roswell’s Mill Kitchen, we learned about the town’s development as a center of textile production from Danielle S. Willkens, Associate Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology. Courtney Ahlstrom Christy, Valuer of Fine Art, Rare Books & Material Culture at Ahlstrom Appraisals, shared new research on the collection at the 1842 Barrington Hall. Guests also toured the impressive 1840 Bulloch Hall, perhaps best known as the childhood home of President Theodore Roosevelt’s mother. We were grateful for the opportunity for a tour and object study of the extraordinary collection of Georgia decorative and folk art assembled by Janice and David Miller, with thanks to their daughter Michelle, an expert in porcelain painted at Atlanta’s Lycett studio. The day concluded in Marietta, with a closing reception at the c. 1845 William Root House, which offers an impressive interactive tour of this restored residence.

If you are interested in our upcoming programs, see our Calendar of Events and make sure you are subscribed to our email list for updates about registration openings. Please note that members at the Ambassador and Champion levels receive first opportunity to register.