Alexandra Troxell is a student on the Public History track of the MHP program at Georgia State. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art with a concentration in Photography in Spring 2014. The daughter of two Yankee transplants, she has lived in Metro Atlanta her entire life, currently residing in Marietta, Georgia.

As an undergraduate at Georgia State, Alexandra began researching the history of a local artist cooperative called Nexus. Founded as a gallery and gathering space for photographers in 1973, the group had a rich, yet seemingly untold history. Alexandra worked to create a documentary film to document and disseminate this organization. Through this research, she met multiple arts organizations and arts administrators with long and wonderful histories, but no good method of recording or sharing those histories. It is toward this goal, bridging the gap between history and the arts, that Alexandra began her current studies.

Alexandra’s first introduction into the serious study of history was an Oral History course with Dr. Cliff Kuhn. It was this course that informed her nine interviews with Nexus stakeholders and his guidance that led her to enroll in graduate school. Oral History will always hold a special interest for Alexandra. Educational programming and community outreach are also strong interests.

Alexandra currently has an assistantship in the Special Collections Archives at Georgia State working with Women’s Activist Oral Histories. She is also interning at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Georgia (MOCAga) and has previously interned at Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. MOCAga is doing exactly the kind of work that Alexandra hopes to do with her degree. Their mission is to document and preserve the history of the arts in Georgia. They hold exhibitions just as any other gallery, but they also have a permanent collection of works by Georgia artists and an archive of arts related materials and arts organizations records.

Alexandra hopes that this course will help her find new ways of disseminating recent history and her own research to a broader audience in a more accessible manner.

Posts by Alexandra Troxell Include:

“History as Digital Practice”

Research topic:

Alexandra’s research will focus on the history of the State Farmer’s Market in the West End.