Agnes (gallery)
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Agnes was a Birmingham, Alabama photography gallery from 1992 to 2000. Jon Coffelt, Shawn Boley and Jan Hughes opened the gallery with the mission of attempting to raise awareness of social issues — such as [cancer], AIDS, death and dying, the environment, homelessness, ethics, racism, classism, imprisonment — through photojournalism, film, video, poetry, and book arts. Controversial, Agnes was picketed on several occasions, one of which resulted in a USA Today article.[citation needed]Melissa Springer's Julia Tutwiler Prison Series was Agnes' first exhibit. After eight years and 77 exhibitions the gallery closed in 2000. Alexandre Glyadelov's[1] Homeless in Bosnia with Médecins sans Frontières was the gallery's last exhibit.
Agnes worked with Visual AIDS[2] and "The Electric Blanket"[3] and hosted its first "World's AIDS Day" in 1992 with "A Day without Art".[4]
UPsouth traveled to several venues across Birmingham, including Space One Eleven, Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Visual Arts Gallery, and Agnes itself.[5] It showed the work of artists Emma Amos and Willie Cole and writer Bell Hooks, as well as Ann Benton, Priscilla Hancock Cooper, Karen Graffeo, Lee Isaacs, Mary Ann Sampson, J. M. Walker and Marie Weaver.[6].
The gallery assisted Ellen Fleurov with her Olympic exhibition at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia called "Picturing the South.[7] This exhibition was also made into a book by Susan Sipple Elliott, The South by Its Photographers.
Agnes worked with many other artists: Sara Garden Armstrong, Pinkie M.M. Bass, Ruth Bernhard, Mare Blocker, Dan Budnik, Clayton Colvin, Paul Caponigro, Al Edwards, Mitchell Gaudet, Nina Glaser, Karen Graffeo, William K. Greiner, Susan Hensel, Davi Det Hompson, Christina Hope, Shig Ikeda, Lee Isaacs, Steven Katzman, Susan E. King, Janice Kluge, Jim Koss, Cam Langley, Ruth Laxson, O. Winston Link, Spider Martin, Matuschka, Ray Lewis Payne, Vicki Ragan, Ed Ruscha, Mary Ann Sampson, David Sandlin, Claire Jeanine Satin, Virginia Scruggs, Joel Seah, Volker Seding, Vincent Serbin, Robert A. Shaefer jr., Carolyn Sherer, Jack Spencer, Thomas Tulis, Jerry Uelsmann, Adriene Veninger, Jess Marie Walker, Marie Weaver, Nancy Webber and Randy West among others.
[edit] External links
[edit] Notes
- ^ PDF link
- ^ Visual AIDS "strives to increase public awareness of AIDS through the visual arts"; see its web page.
- ^ Briefly explained here.
- ^ Described here.
- ^ Press release
- ^ Weaver lists this in her résumé.
- ^ The exhibition is described in Allison Eckardt Ledes, "The South in photographs: Artistic pictures taken from Savannah, GA" (Magazine Antiques, July 1996, reproduced here). See Ellen Dugan, ed. Picturing the South (San Francisco: Chronicle), Acknowledgements pg. 10).
