Higher Education · Arts · Adaptive Reuse
McEachern Art Center, Mercer University
Macon, Georgia
A downtown storefront at 332 Second Street became "the MAC" — Mercer's contemporary art gallery and studios, and the Art Department's first off-campus home in its seventy-year history.
- Address
- 332 Second Street
- Opened
- February 2019
- Program
- Gallery + studios + classrooms
- Named for
- Teresa McEachern
The project
Mercer's Art Department was founded in 1946 and spent more than fifty years in Hardman Hall on campus. The McEachern Art Center moved it downtown: a renovated historic storefront with a street-level exhibition gallery and second-floor studios and classrooms, dedicated at the end of January 2019 and opened to the public on a First Friday.
The renovation kept the working character of the building — tall storefront glass, long open floors, original structure — and put a public face on it. The gallery, now known simply as "the MAC," is free to visit and takes no commission on art sales; it functions as both a teaching space and a contemporary-art venue on the Second Street corridor.
The project's lead gift came from the Griffith Family Foundation, naming the center for Teresa McEachern. For downtown Macon, it added one more storefront returned to daily use; for the university, a bridge between campus and the city's growing arts district.
Research record
Sources and provenance
Project facts and photography were archived from the firm’s public portfolio and cross-checked against the supplementary sources below.
Project photography from the firm's 2026 qualification submittal.