![]() ![]() He curated visual art for the festival and remembered mounting important exhibitions in the Bathhouse space in the 1980s, including ones by Howardina Pindell and Betye Saar. “I loved working with Pat, she was always open to new ideas,” said retired University of Georgia art professor and artist Bill Paul of Athens. By 1985, almost 2.5 million people came to Piedmont Park for the festival, which seemed to unfold without a hitch. In 1979, the Alliance Theatre brought Richard Dreyfuss and Paul Winfield in a festival production of “Othello.” Regional and national artists exhibited. “All the charm just barely hid a will you didn’t want to cross.” Pat had an “ability to get people to do what they didn’t want to and love her for it,” said Jennifer Gann. As the youngest child in the family, Whitney just “hung out” at the festival the entire time it was going on and rode on the horses of the mounted police officers. “She wasn’t artistic, she was organized,” said Whitney Gann. The next year, it moved to Piedmont Park, gradually increasing in scope to include theatre and dance performances, sculpture, a curated arts display, children’s activities and an artists market. The Arts Festival of Atlanta had grown rapidly from its 1954 backyard beginnings in Buckhead. ![]() At a friend’s suggestion, she applied and was hired. She was working for a recruiting firm in 1976 when she spotted the job of directing the arts festival. Pat joined the Junior League and began volunteering, including her involvement with the creation of the Center for Puppetry Arts. Nine months later, their first child was born, followed soon after by a second daughter and eventually by a son and another girl. After she married Archibald Gann, they moved to Atlanta, where he had a position with IBM. She graduated from the University of Maryland with a math degree. Her adventurous spirit led Pat into getting a pilot’s license as a teenager. “It was the best thing in the world, and I’m never going to have it again,” said Betsy Gann “There wasn’t a written recipe, she just made it.” Her mother was from Baton Rouge, and every Christmas - and sometimes Thanksgiving - Pat would make a gumbo with the turkey carcass, following her mother’s recipe. Her father worked for the state department and traveled to India to help with agricultural matters. Gann was born on February 17, 1936, the only child of Edward and Emma Davis, in Washington, D.C. ![]()
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