Past Exhibitions

CHRISTENBERRY: In Alabama is 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 is 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 consists 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 includes 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 pays 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 includes 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.