The FIFA Fan Festival roars to life at Centennial Olympic Park today, but Atlanta's answer to the World Cup isn't confined to big screens and concert stages. Across the city, five gallery exhibitions are working out what the world's game actually means here — through photography, painting, mixed media and archival deep cuts — and two of them open on Fan Fest Day One, per Rough Draft Atlanta.
Opening tonight on Edgewood: 'Through Our Eyes'
The show closest to downtown — and the only reception you can make tonight — is 'Through Our Eyes' at One Contemporary Gallery, 395 Edgewood Ave. SE. Curated by acclaimed Atlanta photographer Sheila Pree Bright and sponsored by Leica Camera USA in the camera maker's centennial year, it gathers four women photographers documenting the communities that make Atlanta, Atlanta. Bright debuts her new series 'Where We Gather,' shot inside the city's sports fan culture, alongside work by Nicole Craine, Ysa Lopez and Julie Yarbrough exploring the city's LGBTQ+ community, immigrant communities and the HBCU corridor. Bright has said the goal is to spotlight professional women photographers working outside the traditional fine-arts world.
The opening reception runs 6–9 p.m. tonight, Thursday, June 11 — free with RSVP, with DJ Tracy Levine on the music and free parking on site. The exhibition hangs through July 26, an easy streetcar hop from the Fan Fest footprint. Full details on our event listing, and RSVP via Eventbrite.
Also opening today: 'Art of the Game'
Gallery Chimera opens 'Art of the Game' today as well. Presented by Contrapunto Group, the show channels soccer's culture and passion through painting, drawing and mixed media from eight artists: Jorge Arcos, Pedro Fuertes, Catalina Gomez Beuth, Dora Lopez, Wilay Mendez Paez, Carlos A. Solis, Melvin Toledo and Carol Santos. One scheduling note before you lace up: the galleries are open today, but the opening reception isn't until Saturday, June 13, from 7:30–9:30 p.m. The exhibition runs through July 11.
Three more already on view
- 'Lines of Play' — ABV Gallery, East Atlanta Village, through July 5. More than 30 local and international artists take on players in motion, crowd scenes and abstract readings of the game. The Courtney Hicks mixed-media piece above — paper, marker, pen, colored pencil, wood and aerosol — comes from this show.
- 'Footwork' — Schatten Gallery at Emory University, through July 19. Co-curated by Randy Gue of Emory's Rose Library and Kicks & Fros founder Melissa Carnegie, it traces Atlanta's intertwined soccer, civil rights and globalism stories from 1968 to the present, with Atlanta Chiefs history and adidas archive material in the mix.
- 'The African Game' — African Diaspora Art Museum of Atlanta (ADAMA) at Pittsburgh Yards, through July 25. Photographer and filmmaker Andrew Dosunmu's portraits of football fans across nine African nations, from Senegal and Ghana to Egypt and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The World Cup will fill Atlanta with noise for the next month. These five rooms are where the city gets to talk back — on fandom, belonging and who gets to be in the picture. Start on Edgewood tonight.
Source: Rough Draft Atlanta (Sherri Daye Scott, June 10, 2026). Reception details via Eventbrite.