What you might not know before you meet her:
She'll sing along in her car to everything from John Legend's latest CD to "Best of the Bee Gees" ("I've got quite the falsetto"). Words used by colleagues, mentors and artists to describe her: "driven," "strategic," "down to earth" and —- from a curator at the University of Chicago —- both "scholar" and "soul sister No. 1." She devours British royal fiction set in the 16th century. She's hot to dig into a new biography of Cleopatra.
Then you meet her. It's just weeks before Christmas. She's got a plane to catch in a few hours to Miami. She's seven months pregnant.
And inside the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Andrea Barnwell Brownlee, the young museum's youthful, nationally ascending director, is doing what she likes to do best: talking art.
She's talking about a video by Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, a Cuban exile whose mixed-media work explores her family's Afro-Cuban roots and feelings of displacement. The four-minute loop shows the artist with her body adorned in chalky white paint, pulling from her mouth an endless organza ribbon on which is written "identity" and "incident." There's no sound.
"I love the fact it's a silent piece and makes the viewers work," said Barnwell Brownlee, 37. "I did not want this to be a place to come and merely look at pretty pictures.
"One of the most important purchases I've made for the museum is a set of 60 chairs," she added. "We set up tables and chairs in a round-robin and, you know, we fight in here. I believe these walls were meant to be contested."
Some of Atlanta's most talked-about, critically applauded and publicly contested exhibitions have shown up at Spelman's off-the-beaten-art-path museum since Barnwell Brownlee arrived in 2001 as its first full-time director.
With a small budget and singular mission —- represent black women artists of the African diaspora —- she's managed not only to show work that Atlantans otherwise might not see, but also to transform the museum into a kind of insider's find for many far outside Spelman's campus.
Building 'bit by bit'
Last year's two-part "Cinema Remixed and Reloaded: Black Women Artists and the Moving Image Since 1970," was talked about nationwide as a landmark. The Campos-Pons show last fall was one of ArtForum magazine's "Critics' Picks."
And just opened is an exhibition of Spelman's permanent collection, put together by curator Anne Collins Smith.
"[The Spelman museum] is one of the gems we have here in Atlanta," said Sylvie Fortin, editor in chief of Art Papers, a contemporary arts journal based in Atlanta. "It's something unique in America located right here."
Added Jeffrey Grove, contemporary art curator at the High Museum: "She has a high-profile reputation outside Atlanta. She's part of the larger dialogue. While Spelman has a specific mission, she's managed to produce relevant exhibitions that fit within those guidelines and somehow aren't limited to it."
For Barnwell Brownlee, a Spelman alumna, there's an almost make-it-good-and-they-will-come underpinning to growing the reputation of a museum that the 127-year-old college didn't build until 1996.
Before then, art went up wherever anyone found wall space: dorms, offices, hallways.
"A lot of this, honestly, is about letting people know we exist," said Barnwell Brownlee, now expecting her first child any day. "A lot of people know Spelman. But they don't know we have a museum.
"So," she added, "bit by bit ..."
Art and identity
Nobody knew whether Barnwell Brownlee would ever return to Spelman after she graduated in 1993 with degrees in English and art. She went on to Duke University to earn her doctorate in art history, then got a MacArthur Curatorial Fellowship at the Art Institute of Chicago.
But when the 4,500-square-foot museum opened at Spelman inside a gleaming new academic center funded by Bill Cosby, the director's seat was almost literally kept warm for her from the start.
"Andrea came back for a visit when she was at Duke and I said, 'You'll be ready in a couple of years to take it over,' " said Akua McDaniel, the museum's first, interim director, who taught Barnwell Brownlee and is now art department chairwoman. "She laughed, like, 'You're kidding me.' But I wasn't joking. I knew she was an exceptional person."
Barnwell Brownlee the student came to Spelman from Alexandria, Va., the daughter of a career military man. She was a bookworm, a cheerleader, a member of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.
She also loved to write, and at Spelman became an English major. She didn't think about concentrating on art until she spent her junior year abroad in England, where a new arts scene in London was exploding among British blacks. It gave her fresh insights into race and identity. She suddenly knew what she wanted to study and write about.
She recalls once sitting at a table with other female students from Pakistan, China, Canada and Bermuda. "And we were all talking about what it meant to be black in the U.K.," she said. "And I was thinking, 'Wow. So black basically meant 'other.' It was illuminating to see these other ideas of blackness."
She did her dissertation on black British women artists while at Duke, where she's remembered for her smarts, inquisitiveness and drive.
"She has all the things you want for someone in the art world," said Richard Powell, professor of art and art history at Duke. "She's smart, she thinks deeply about things, she interacts with artists.
"But for me, the word that comes to mind is 'driven,' " he added. "She sets her mind and gets things done."
'She likes artists'
She was 30 when she became the Spelman museum's director. What she lacked in experience, McDaniel said, "she made up for by her enthusiasm. People are affected by her enthusiasm. They want to be part of this energy and zest."
McDaniel said her role was to "lay the foundation." Barnwell Brownlee, she said, "has taken it to another level. She really brought the museum into the 21st century."
She has managed that, observers say, by being a respected scholar, an adept networker, a canny fund-raiser and a favorite among artists —- that last not always true of increasingly corporatized museum directors.
"She likes artists," said Hamza Walker, associate curator at the Renaissance Society, a contemporary art museum at the University of Chicago. "She understands what the messiness of working with living artists is about. ... It takes a special temperament."
Her professional networking has paid off with some of her most acclaimed exhibitions. "Cinema Remixed and Reloaded" resulted from a casual conversation with Valerie Cassel Oliver, a curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston.
They were bouncing programming ideas off each other, and before they knew it, they were writing down artists for a show.
Some art world observers wonder whether Barnwell Brownlee won't someday leave Spelman to lead a museum with more resources and a broader mission. The Spelman museum operates with three staffers and a $285,000 annual budget —- in the bottom half of metro Atlanta arts organizations. Barnwell Brownlee calls herself "a grant-writing fool."
"If smart money were looking for someone to take their institution to the next level, I'd expect them to look her way," said Greg Head, a local collector and museum donor. "But she's very principled. ... She won't go unless it's right for her."
Barnwell Brownlee said she's had chances to leave Atlanta, but "none of them is as intriguing as being in this place at this time."
"I've learned I'm a builder," she said. "There are people who come in and play cleanup. There are people who come in and carry out someone else's ideas. I learned I'm not that person. Where I live is the place where timing and opportunity collide."
She also has a baby girl on the way —- "I'll have a new boss," she allowed —- and is excited about an exhibition she's putting together for next fall: "Undercover: Performing and Transforming Black Female Identities."
She won't give many details. All she will reveal seems as much a dare as a come-on.
"Stay tuned," she said.
ANDREA BARNWELL BROWNLEE
Title: Director, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art
Age: 37
Hometown: Alexandria, Va.
Education: Spelman College, Bachelor of Arts in English and Art; Duke University, master's and doctorate in art history; MacArthur curatorial fellow at the Art Institute of Chicago
Family: Married to Edward Brownlee, 49, vice president of facilities at Turner Properties. Expecting first child (due any day now).
On looking at art: "I'm not here to make people like specific works. My responsibility is to ensure that they know how to talk about the work. I find in this hyper-stimulated visual culture, we can't talk about visual. The first thing they'll say is it means x, y and z. And I'll say, 'Wait a minute, what color is it? What's the size of it?' Just some basic formal things. People want to get into this aggressive conversation about what it means before they even talk about what it is."
ON EXHIBIT
"Showcase and Tell: Treasures from the Spelman College Permanent Collection." Through May 16. Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, 350 Spelman Lane S.W., Atlanta. 404-270-5607; www.spelman.edu/museum.
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