News & Opinion

The roof at Mercedes-Benz Stadium will remain shut deep into the Atlanta Falcons football season this fall, as engineers work to “mechanize” its opening and closing, AMB Group CEO Steve Cannon said today.

Shop the art at the annual Dogwood Festival, sing along to Jimmy Buffett at Verizon Amphitheater, and enjoy the best of cinema at Atlanta Film Festival.

Ronald Lockett, a little-known self-taught artist, used found materials and barn metal scraps to create pieces about everything from the Holocaust to his own experience as a black man in the post–civil rights era South. Preserving—and putting a spotlight on—this legacy, and that of other so-called “outsider” artists, has been a priority for the High for more than 20 years.

This June, Ava DuVernay, director of Selma—the long-delayed movie about a pivotal period in the life of Martin Luther King Jr.—stood at the front of historic Wheat Street Baptist Church. She was preparing for a scene featuring Stephan James, the Canadian actor who plays civil rights legend John Lewis. “My back was turned to the door when suddenly Stephan’s eyes got big,” DuVernay said.

Spider-Man: Homecoming was spotted filming at Grady High School, Fast 8 took Vin Diesel to the burbs, and Georgia reaches a new level of filming dominance.

For the past decade, Dr. Joel Zivot has acted as a medical expert in numerous death penalty cases throughout the South. Legal defense teams seek him out for medical examinations before execution, for expert testimony in court, and, in rare cases, for autopsies to assess a victim’s experience during execution.

Bernice King was only an infant when her father delivered his famous “Dream” speech at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, but she can recite its lines with authority. And so, welcoming civic leaders invited to the Carter Center for a discussion on education and civil rights, she said she would like to focus on the portion of the speech about the “red hills of Georgia.”

After delivering the State of the Union response, Stacey Abrams's name is once again splashed across national headlines. Here's what Atlanta's reporters, pundits, and politicos had to say about the address.

The Old Fourth Ward landmark has unveiled plans to grow by 500,000 square feet, with a new 225-foot “hospitality living” tower.

If there’s an Atlantan with something interesting to say, there’s a good chance they’ve said it to Rose Scott. Her radio program, Closer Look, which airs live every weekday afternoon on local NPR member station WABE, hosts a vibrant cross-section of the city’s movers and shakers, interviewed by Scott herself. “I always say we’re a curator of conversations,” she told me. “Community conversations.”