Past Exhibitions

Duke University professor and photographer Alex Harris approached famed naturalist and scientist, Edward O. Wilson, after reading Wilson’s evocation of his Southern childhood in The Naturalist and Anthill. Following their meeting, Harris and Wilson collaborated on a book about Wilson’s native world of Mobile, Alabama. The photographer and the naturalist joined forces to capture the rhythms of this storied Alabama Gulf region through Wilson’s lyrical words and Harris’s photographic images capturing the mood of Mobile’s radical transformation city as it adapted to the twenty-first century. Their book became a universal story, one that tells us where we all come from and why we are here, and was titled “Why We Are Here: Mobile and the Spirit of a Southern City,” followed by an exhibition of the same title in 2012, presented at the Mobile Museum of Art.

Ten years after that first exhibition, a selection of Harris’s photographs and Wilson’s evocative quotations are presented once again in a tribute exhibition and program celebrating the work and life of E.O. Wilson (1929-2021).

E.O. Wilson Day in Mobile, introduced by Mobile writer and filmmaker, Ben Raines, will be presented at the Mobile Museum of Art on Friday, October 7, 2022, 5 – 7:30 pm; the program of speakers and filmed selections will be followed by a reception and exhibition opening in the museum gallery.