Brenau University recently welcomed Gena Brodie Robbins as its new director of galleries.
Robbins will oversee Brenau’s five exhibition spaces and the university’s collection of more than 3,500 works of art from international and national artists.
“I'm excited, can't wait to come in and push the galleries to really reach the students,” Robbins said. “Give them some educational opportunities where they'll walk away maybe even changed, you know, for the better, for the greater good.”
Robbins was born in Macon but raised in Tifton, Georgia. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in art education from Valdosta State University and a Master of Fine Arts in painting from the Savannah College of Art & Design. While attending SCAD, she won the New York Studio Space Scholarship at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts and internships at the Triangle Artist Workshop and Exit Art Gallery.
“I was surrounded by professional New York artists there that were very inspirational. I was also very lucky to work with Exit Art gallery and was an intern for a major gallery in Chelsea. So while I was there, I learned a lot of just how to help run a gallery,” Robbins said.
After graduation, Robbins co-founded and directed Hollingsworth Gallery in Palm Coast, Florida, curating international and national shows of world-renowned artists such as Ilker Yardimski and Greg Fugua.
Her journey with art started with summers in Port St. Joe. Robbins would search for sand dollars with her father, bleach and paint them.
“I bought this Walter Foster's how-to book, How to Paint Sunsets. So my father sat with me and he and I tried to learn how to mix paint and mix colors and all of that,” she said, “and I actually learned how to paint doing that in the summers at the beach house when it rained."
