The Coleman Center for the Arts and Culture
In the Heart of Dixie, CCA Curatorial Program, August 4 to August 31, 2006
The Coleman Center for Arts and Culture is pleased to present “In the Heart of Dixie” an outsider’s view of Alabama by the California College of Art Curatorial Program. The work is the culmination of a creative research project that will be on display at the Coleman Center from August 4th to August 31st.
In the Fall of 2005, a group of graduate students in the Curatorial Practice Program of the California College of Art in San Francisco, made a special study of the state of Alabama, led by Matthew Coolidge of the Center for Land Use Interpretation, a faculty member at the College. The project involved collectively learning about the history, culture, economics, and character of the state. Each of the individuals in the group then selected a number of sites- physical locations in the state – to examine in further detail. The group traveled to Alabama in November, 2005, and met with numerous individuals, visited institutions, collected stories, documentation, and experiences. The exhibit represents a distillation of the research and consideration, as it is expressed in its incidental and intentional landscape, and refracted through the lens of the curatorial interpretations.
The student’s description states, “Alabama might be the most misunderstood of the nation’s states. It is one of the most stigmatized by stereotypes, which focus on poverty, racism, and rural isolation, that do exist there, but exist elsewhere too, and in similar quantities. As a result, many have missed the wider view. From the headquarters of France’s Louisiana colony, to the capitol of the Confederate nation, and from the birth events of the civil rights movement, to the tomb of Hank Williams, its land holds many crucial sites in the social evolution of the United States. Yet today’s Alabama is more than a record of historical events. It is a land like many others, but with a unique exoticism, and a monumental flair. Big federal projects have altered the landscape, especially in the north, where the Tennessee Valley Authority’s power plants and waterworks provided energy for massive industrialization, leading to the development of munitions production, rocketry, and high tech, that continues today. Birmingham, the state’s largest city, once the heavy industry capital of the south, has changed into a national center for banking, healthcare, and engineering companies. Once famous for its cotton, many of the fields have given way to automotive plants (the largest industry in the state), chicken farms (Alabama is second in the nation in “broiler” production, after Arkansas), forests farmed for wood and pulp products (the largest agricultural product in the state), and the typically American strip malls and suburbs. The state does, to be sure, harbor many ghosts of the past, some of which still show signs of life, amid a romantic torpor. But the state has more than its share of hopefulness, enterprise, individualism, creative energy and grace to steer it into the future.”
For more information please contact the Coleman Center for Arts and Culture, 205.392-2005, or email info@colemanarts.org.