Art Gallery

By Kevin Lee Associate Editor

The new year brings an exciting schedule of exhibits to Mobile sure to appeal to even the most discriminating of palates.

Nowhere is this more evident than at the Museum of Art where a group of shows arrive in January.

On Jan. 12, a pair of exhibits that reflect the “sense of place” so strongly felt by Southerners will premiere. William Christenberry: Photographs, 1961-2005 is comprised of photographs by the Hale County native-turned-Washington D.C. resident on his annual forays back to his old stomping grounds. Christenberry captures time’s passage on the places of his youth in the Heart of Dixie’s “forgotten corners.” The show is made of 50 photographs and one sculpture. It runs through March 25.

Howard Cook’s Drawings of Alabama is an evocative and kinetic display of drawings the Georgia artist made during a visit west in 1934. On loan from the Georgia Museum of Art, many of the 45 drawings have never been shown outside the Peach State. The show runs through April 15.

On Jan. 19, a pair of more internationally famous names make a stop at the museum. Linda McCartney’s Sixties: Portrait of an Era is on loan from estate of the late wife of former Beatle Paul McCartney and presents 51 photographs that record the uncommon world to which she was privy. Also included in the exhibit are two films, the BBC documentary “Behind the Lens” and Paul McCartney’s art film “The Grateful Dead.” The exhibit ends April 15.

Also opening that day, Ansel Adams: American Landscape brings the work of America’s most famous landscape photographer to Langan Park. Though he worked with an unwieldy 8” x 10” field camera, Adams managed to create some of the most evocative and dramatic photography of American West, a portfolio that lent its impact and sheer beauty to a burgeoning wilderness conservation movement. The 54-photograph collection was organized by the Dayton Art Institute in Dayton, Ohio. The show closes on April 15.

For more info, call 208-5200 or go to www.mobilemuseumofart.com.

Speaking of “sense of place”...

Space 301 is getting into the ‘locale-centric game as well. “Art & Place II: Material at Hand” is set to open at the downtown gallery on Jan. 12 with an opening reception at 6 p.m.. It’s the second project in Clayton V. Colvin’s two-part series dealing with the influence “a sense of place” on artists. Space 301 press release: “Today the word ‘place’ can be used to describe not only a physical location, but something as intangible as a Web page.

While the first exhibition demonstrated the influence of the virtual world, the focus of this exhibition is the significance of medium in an artist’s work, how this affects a sense of place and how chosen media may also function as the content or the subject of the artwork.”

The exhibition runs until March 4 and is the first exhibition in a new space named Space 301 Off Centre within the CLA Saenger complex at 6 South Joachim. The primary facility of Space 301 will be underway which will eventually result in a facility for workshops and other productive art programs. Though the spot on Joachim Street is smaller, six 2007 exhibitions are planned.

Blowing the roof off

Not to be outdone, the Exploreum in downtown Mobile brings an explosive exhibit to bear when A Day in Pompeii begins on Jan. 12 and runs through June 3. Mobile will be the first venue in the Southeast to an exhibition on the ancient Roman city destroyed and buried in 79 A.D. by the eruption of nearby Mt. Vesuvius. The exhibit has been coordinated in collaboration with the Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompeii, the Italian agency responsible for the site and revives the daily life of the Mediterranean port town and the tragedy that unfolded there.

The world-renowned show will include several of the plaster casts made of the volcano’s victims during excavation, heart rendering, de facto sculptures of lives in their waning moments.

An IMAX film on ancient Greece accompanies it, as does a virtual stroll through the pre-eruption streets of Pompeii in the Hearin-Chandler Virtual Journeys Theater.

A similar exhibit attracted over 300,000 visitors to the Field Museum in Chicago. Remarkable for the personal face it puts on the victims of a disaster over 17 centuries ago, the exhibit will be a once-in-a-lifetime chance for most Gulf Coast residents. Museum personnel expect over 150,000 visitors to the show.

For more info, go to www.exploreum.net.

Over the pond

Ameri’ca Jones Gallaspy is certainly busy over at Fairhope’s Gulf ArtSpace leaving her mark and January will be no exception. “Stitch,” a new exhibit, opens on Jan. 5 and promises to highlight the new, more feminine slant to the Bay Area’s renegades of art.

The traveling exhibition of women and fiber arts is curated by Gallaspy and explores the variety of textile-based arts and their role in the lives of women. The show runs through Jan. 28.

For some reason, the mention of this brings to mind Gulf’s “Habiliments” show and if it is nearly as evocative, area aficionados will want to circle this one on their calendars.

Kevin Lee is Lagniappe associate editor. Contact him at klee@lagniappemobile.com.

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