The opening reception for the “Artists of Montgomery: Past & Present’ exhibition at the Johnson Center for the Arts Sunday afternoon attracted a large gathering of community people as well as the artists and other Montgomerians.

The exhibition features 187 works of art by 100 Montgomery artists. Sandra Hicks of the Dublin community is the curator of the exhibition.

“One of the exciting things is that we have a venue where we can hang a show like this,” said Mack Gibson, chair of the Troy-Pike Cultural Arts Center board. “A show of this size, quality and diversity helps brand our Center for what we do.”

Gibson said that the artists were pleasantly shocked to find that Troy has such an outstanding arts center.

“We heard a lot of comments from the artists,” he said. “Many of them said they had never made the trip down to Troy before. To find such a lovely town was a pleasant surprise and they were just blown away by the town and cultural arts center. The artists were please to have their work hung among such a large and diverse grouping of artwork.”

Georgine Clarke, Alabama State Council on the Arts visual arts program manager, attended the reception and was equally excited about the exhibition and the number of people who attended.

“It’s always exciting to see really good art done by Alabama artists,” Clarke said. “And this show has great art. But, what was as exciting to me was the amount of serious conversation between the artists and the public.”

Clarke said the challenge of bringing a whole community of artists to another community was successfully met.

“The idea of bringing historical and contemporary art down the road to Troy was magnificent,” she said.

Richard Metzger, Johnson Center executive director, said he was very pleased with the number of people who attended the reception.

“The response was overwhelming,” he said.

“There was a great show of community support. The staff and volunteers did a great job and we are so very pleased with the quality of the exhibition. The ‘Artists of Montgomery: Past and Present’ exhibition gets our 2011 calendar off to a good start.”