Presented in conjunction with Mobile Museum of Art’s Alabama Bicentennial Celebration exhibition Christenberry: In Alabama this tribute publication features scholarship by Lynda Roscoe Hartigan (The Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Executive Director & CEO, Peabody Essex Museum), William T. Dooley (Associate Professor of Art and Director of the Sarah Moody Gallery of Art, University of Alabama), Gail Andrews (R. Hugh Daniel Director, Birmingham Museum of Art, retired) Jennifer Jankauskas Ph.D. (Curator of Art, Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts), Marilyn Laufer Ph.D. (Director, Jule Collins Smith Museum, Auburn University), and J. Richard Gruber (Director Emeritus, Ogden Museum of Southern Art).
The publications comes as a two book set with J. Richard Gruber's William Christenberry: Art & Family, which was presented in conjunction with the Ogden Museum of Southern Art's exhibition, "The Art of Family: The Christenberrys (October 2 - November 22, 2000).
About the Exhibition:
CHRISTENBERRY: In Alabama was organized on the occasion of the Alabama Bicentennial Celebration, and honors the artist William Christenberry’s exploration of themes related to his native state: Alabama’s landscape, structures, traditions, and people.
This exhibition’s premise was threefold: honoring the artist’s intimate, lifelong exploration of his native state; recognizing the wealth of Christenberry work collected in Alabama’s art museums; and presenting the Christenberry family’s creative lineage and legacy over four generations.
Hailed as “one of the most respected and influential artists of the modern South,” by the Washington Post and the artist whose iconic photographs have been described by Walker Percy as a “poetic evocation of a haunted countryside,” William Christenberry found his muse in his native state of Alabama, it’s derelict buildings, and verdant landscape.
The exhibition consisted of over 90 Christenberry works including paintings, drawings, sculptures and photographs, drawn from university collections at Auburn and Tuscaloosa and in Alabama’s major city museums in Birmingham, Huntsville, and Montgomery. It also included a ”prologue” installation featuring the Christenberry family’s creative lineage and legacy over four generations, and an installation of the artist’s famous studio wall of southern signs, collected during his annual journeys southward. This installation paid tribute to the artist’s ongoing “love affair” with the rural South—as the exhibition honors the state’s dedicated support of the artist and his work.
The exhibition included documentary films of the artist by Washington D.C. filmmaker, Stanley Staniski, and a tribute publication of essays by William Christenberry art historians, museum directors and curators.
CHRISTENBERRY: In Alabama, organized by the Mobile Museum of Art, was underwritten by the Crampton Trust, with additional support from the City of Mobile, the Alabama State Bicentennial Committee, the Alabama State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Exhibition was open from March 10, 2017 through July 9, 2017.
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About the Artist:
William Christenberry was an American artist, recognized for his haunting color photographs of landscapes, signs, and abandoned structures in rural Alabama. Chistenberry’s small photographs made with a Kodak Brownie camera initially served as color references for his expressionist paintings, but took on a primary role in his creative output as the artist discovered the work of photographers like Walker Evans, and later William Eggleston. Born on November 5, 1936 in Tuscaloosa, AL, Christenberry studied painting at the University of Alabama where he received both his BFA and MA. The artist continued making paintings and sculptures throughout his life and taught painting and drawing at the Corcoran School of Arts in Washington D.C. for many decades. On his relationship to the rural South, he has said, “My stance is very subjective…, the place is so much a part of me. I can’t escape it and have no desire to escape it. I continue to come to grips with it… It’s a love affair—a lifetime of involvement with a place.” Christenberry died on November 28, 2016 in Washington, D.C. His works are in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C., and the Kemper Museum in Kansas City. (Copied from the website: https://www.artnet.com/artists/william-christenberry/)
William Christenberry: Art & Family ISBN: 0-9706190-0-6