The Birmingham Museum Of Art: A Civilizing Spirit

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — How does a rough-and-tumble mercantile town polish off its edges and get a little refinement?

If you’re Birmingham in the late 19th and early 20th 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 issue of Alabama Heritage magazine, Vicki Ingham tells the story of the formation of the Birmingham Art Club (later the Birmingham Art Association). The group consisted largely 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 50th anniversary, the Birmingham Museum of Art enjoys a reputation as one of the finest regional museums in the country.

Today, the museum is home to a wide assortment of art and artifacts, including an extensive collection of German decorative cast iron and the Beeson Collection of Wedgwood pottery, the largest of its kind in the world. The museum has growing collections of African, Native American and pre-Columbian art. Most recently, the museum obtained the Eugenia Woodward Hitt Collection of French Painting and Decorative Arts, a highly regarded assemblage of 800 French 18th century objects.

“I believe the founders of the Birmingham Art Club would today be proud of what they started almost a century ago,” current museum director Gail Trechsel said.

Vicki Ingham, a book editor at Meredith Corporation in Des Moines, Iowa, earned her master’s degree in art history through a joint program with The University of Alabama and The University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Alabama Heritage is a nonprofit quarterly magazine published by The University of Alabama and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. To order the magazine, write Alabama Heritage, Box 870342, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0342, or call 205/348-7467.