Tuscaloosa native William Christenberry has spent his lifetime exploring and recording Alabama’s Black Belt, particularly rural Hale County, where his grandparents, who had lived since 1917.  Christenberry was born in 1936, the same year that Fortune magazine dispatched writer James Agee and photographer Walker Evans to Hale County to work jointly on an article about sharecroppers.  This collaboration led to their famous book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.  The text and images of the book so resonated with the young Christenberry when he came upon it in 1960 that it set his creative course for life.

In 1961 Christenberry moved from Alabama, eventually settling in Washington DC, where he still lives and works.  Except for yearly forays home, Christenberry has spent his adult life away from Alabama, a fact that has greatly influenced his artistic approach, which stems from his early experiences and memories.

Christenberry set about a lifelong aesthetic reconstruction of Hale County through drawings, photographs, sculpture and mixed media tableaux that conflated his own personal vision with a larger rural Southern consciousness.  His work exists as a prolonged investigation into both the distinctiveness and gradual dissolution of his beloved native land.

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In 2009 the Kress Foundation sponsored a photographic campaign at various museums throughout the United States to document the installation of Kress works using panoramic photography.

The Birmingham Museum of Art is pleased to present an after-hours experience on the first Thursday of each month. Wander the galleries, sip cocktails in the garden, catch a movie, or sit down with friends for tapas at Oscar's. The Museum is open for your enjoyment until 9PM.

General Admission is FREE to enjoy First Thursdays: After Hours at the Museum. *

*If you wish to enjoy tapas or cocktails, see below for charges associated with those items.
 
5PM - 9PM // OPEN GALLERIES

Every one of our beautiful galleries will be open throughout the evening. With a collection of over 24,000 works of art, we are constantly rotating our growing permanent collection and featuring newly acquired works, ensuring that each visit to the Museum is a fresh experience.

5PM - 9PM // TAPAS & COCKTAILS // CANCELLED FOR MAY

Please note that May's tapas will not be served, due to Museum Ball set-up in Oscar's Café. 

5:30PM - 8:30PM // DJ // LEE JEFFREY // OSCAR'S CAFÉ

6PM - 7:30PM // BEER TASTING // OSCAR'S CAFÉ

Our friends at Hop City Birmingham will be pouring an array of delicious beers for you to sample in the sculpture garden! Come find your new favorite! 

There will also be a cash bar in the lobby by the auditorium! 

6:30PM //  DROP-IN AND SCULPT // STUDIO 1

All levels welcome. Be inspired by the beautiful sculpture garden for this drop-in sculpting class! Although this is a FREE class, registration is recommended.

7PM // ARTIST TALK // STEINER AUDITORIUM

Hear Icelandic artist, Steinunn Thórarinsdóttir, speak about her current installation in our sculpture garden, Horizons. Click here to learn more about Horizons!  

Albert Bierstadt's masterpiece, Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California (1865), has been reinstalled following several months of conspicuous absence from the Styslinger Gallery of American Art. The work was removed from public view to undertake minor conservation of both the painting and its original frame. This national treasure will now be ready for its "star turn" in the major exhibition American Art and the Civil War, on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. from November 16, 2012 until April 28, 2013. The exhibition will travel to one additional venue, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where it will run from May 21, 2013 till September 2, 2013.

Measuring more than five by eight feet, Albert Bierstadt’s Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California presents the viewer with a breathtaking view of one of America’s most scenic spots. Based on sketches made during a visit in 1863, Bierstadt paints the valley from a vantage point just above the Merced River, looking due west. A sunset bathes the valley’s rock formations in a warm, golden light, with the prospect framed by El Capitan on the right, and Sentinel Rock on the left; the spires of Cathedral Rocks are visible in the distance.

Painted in 1865, the dramatic picture is Bierstadt’s first large-scale Yosemite picture, a subject for which he would become well known. Bierstadt was born in Germany, immigrating to the United States in 1830. In 1853, he returned to his homeland, studying at the Düsseldorf Academy, a school that advocated a clear, linear style, which Bierstadt would incorporate in his own work. Looking Down Yosemite Valley possesses an almost uncanny clarity: from a distance, the painting could easily be mistaken for a photograph, and even up close, one can scarcely detect a single brushstroke. Equally absent is any sign of animal or human life. Since the work was painted at the end of the Civil War, scholars have interpreted this dead calm as a commentary on the national tragedy. Indeed, the painting’s unveiling at the National Academy of Design had to be postponed by two weeks because of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

After its debut, the painting was exhibited around the country before being purchased by Uranus H. Crosby in 1866 for the princely sum of $20,000. Crosby was the proprietor of a lavish opera house in Chicago, which had a picture gallery to house his personal art collection. Crosby’s excessive spending habits soon forced him to find a creative means of satisfying his debts. He held a nationwide lottery, offering his opera house as the grand prize, and Bierstadt’s masterpiece as the second prize. The lottery was so successful that Crosby was able to pay off his creditors and buy back the opera house from the winner. Fortunately for Crosby, he retained the winning ticket for Looking Down Yosemite Valley.

In 1871, Crosby’s Opera House was completely destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire, but the painting was rescued before flames engulfed the building. Over the next two decades, it was exhibited periodically in Chicago, but eventually disappeared from view. It resurfaced in 1929, when it was purchased at a Chicago auction for $300 by a Birmingham woman, who anonymously donated it to the Birmingham Public Library. It hung in the reading room of the library until 1974, when it was transferred to the Birmingham Museum of Art on long-term loan. The Library permanently donated the work in 1991. It has become the anchor of the Museum’s American collection and is among the most highly regarded American landscape paintings in the country.