Rebecca Brantley is a curator, writer, and educator. She is the Director of the Mason-Scharfenstein Museum of Art and Assistant Professor of Art at Piedmont University. Prior to her position at Piedmont College, Brantley taught for the University of Georgia, the University of North Georgia, and Oglethorpe University.
Brantley has authored academic chapters, gallery publications, and various short-form pieces. Her criticism has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, The Atlanta-Journal Constitution, and Metalsmith Magazine. She is a contributing writer for ArtsATL and Burnaway and was the author of a regular art review column for Flagpole Magazine in Athens, Georgia, from 2008-2010.
From 2007 to 2020, Brantley worked with ATHICA: Athens Institute for Contemporary Art, a nonprofit art space in Athens, Georgia. She assumed a leadership role from 2015 to 2016, when she was elected president of the board of directors. She has curated seven exhibitions at ATHICA. In 2016, she was a panelist for the Georgia Council for the Arts. She has served as juror or guest speaker for many local organizations.
EDUCATION:
Brantley earned a BFA and BA with honors from the University of Georgia. She was the first undergraduate to receive a Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities (CURO) Fellowship to do research for Georgia Museum of Art’s Henry D. Green Center for the Study of the Decorative Arts. Subsequently, she earned an MA in art history with distinction from the University of Georgia. Her master’s thesis was the basis for an essay on the artist Matthew Barney that appears in the anthology Contemporary Art About Architecture: A Strange Utility (Ashgate 2013).
