On
the cover:
Madonna and Child with Saint John and Three Angels, ca. 1500, by Sebastiano
Mainardi, Italy, tempera on panel, Kress Collections of Renaissance Art,
Birmingham Museum of Art.(Courtesy Birmingham Museum of Art)
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Article Abstracts and Supplements
The Birmingham Museum of Art: A Civilizing Spirit
by Vicki Ingham
How does a rough-and-tumble mercantile town polish off its edges and get a little refinement? If you're Birmingham, Alabama in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, you cultivate a nascent appreciation of the arts and open yourself a museum, with the help of what one writer erroneously termed a "group of little old ladies." In the Spring 2001 issue of Alabama Heritage, Vicki Ingham tells the story of the formation of the Birmingham Art Club (later the Birmingham Art Association), which consisted largely of a group of energetic and highly cultured Birmingham women, all of them former art students themselves, who ushered in an appreciation for the fine and decorative arts in the so-called Magic City. Later, these very same women were the catalysts for the development and construction of a new museum. Now, celebrating its fiftieth anniversary, the Birmingham Museum of Art enjoys a reputation as one of the finest regional museums in the country.
 © 2000, M. Lewis Kennedy www.mlewiskennedy.com |
by Alice Bowsher
What makes a strip mall different from a farmer's market? Why is the dining experience at a fast food restaurant so different from that at a tucked-away neighborhood bistro? Alice Bowsher knows, and she wrote a book about it. Alabama Heritage's Spring 2001 edition excerpts from Bowsher's new book, Alabama Architecture: Looking at Building and Place, in which she delves into the notion of "place" and how it shapes our experiences of our surroundings. Published by the University of Alabama Press in cooperation with the Alabama Architectural Foundation, Alabama Architecture features one hundred Alabama sites, both grand and modest, from all regions of the state, dating from the antebellum period to the present day.
 Photograph courtesy Jane Simpson. |
by Bailey Thomson
Clarence Cason was described in the Montgomery Advertiser as one of the "most brilliant and engaging thinkers in Alabama." Returning to the University of Alabama as a journalism professor in 1928, only eleven years after his graduation, Cason had already distinguished himself as a highly respected reporter and essayist, widely publishing his works in leading national journals. As a writer, Cason often concerned himself with his Alabama home, questioning the South's stubborn traditionalism while trying to defend its distinctiveness. Cason culminated these thoughts in 1935, in a book of essays titled 90* in the Shade. But in this book that should have been his crowning achievement, Cason found his deepest fears, notes Bailey Thomson in the Spring 2001 issue of Alabama Heritage.
Clarabelle: The Montgomery Advertiser's "Felonious Feline"
by Aileen Kilgore Henderson
Even Grover Cleveland Hall, the Pulitzer Prize-winning editor of the Montgomery Advertiser from 1926-1941, didn't know the scroungy piebald cat that appeared at the Advertiser's offices in January 1938 would soon become the most talked-about female in Montgomery. Named Clarabelle, this "felonious feline" captivated the newspaper staff and the public as well. From the moment she sashayed onto the Advertiser's editorial page she "ran away with the show," as Hall himself admitted. Aileen Kilgore Henderson traces the history of Clarabelle at the Montgomery Advertiser, from her arrival in the offices to her death in 1940.
DEPARTMENTS
Alabama Album
"Hornsby And Cobb in Florence"
Nature Journal
"Neither Spanish Nor Moss" by L. J. Davenport
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