UA Gallery in Cultural Arts Center Unveils Next Exhibition

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — The next exhibition in The University of Alabama Gallery in the Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center, “Wash by Margaret Wrinkle: Seeing Across the Divide,” features a series of photographs taken by Wrinkle at slavery-related sites throughout the South while researching her critically acclaimed novel, “Wash.”

The exhibit will be displayed Nov. 5-Nov. 15.

An opening reception, reading and book signing is Nov. 5 at 5:30 p.m. at the University Gallery in The Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center at 620 Greensboro Avenue in downtown Tuscaloosa.

This event and exhibition is sponsored by UA’s Summersell Center for the Study of the South, and co-sponsored by UA’s departments of American studies, art and art history, English, and gender and race studies.  For more information, visit: http://www.scss.ua.edu

Published by Grove/Atlantic, Wrinkle’s novel “Wash” reexamines American slavery in ways that challenge many contemporary assumptions about race, power, history and healing as it carries the reader from the American South to West Africa and deep into the ancestral stories that reside in the soul.

The New York Times Book Review calls “Wash,” “haunting, tender and superbly measured … a masterly literary work.” “Wash” is a New York Times Editors’ Choice, an O Magazine Top Ten Pick, a People 4 star Pick and a finalist for the Center for Fiction’s Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize.

It has been nominated for the Crook’s Corner Prize for debut Southern Novel and selected as a Great Group Read by Indie Bound and by National Reading Group Month.

Wrinkle paired each of her photographs with short passages from the novel to give a sense of the story, its characters, and the landscape within which they lived.

“I put words together with images to encourage viewers and readers to think about different kinds of literacy: textual literacy, visual literacy, spiritual literacy and emotional literacy,” she said. “There are many different ways to read, and our survival depends on learning all of them.”

A seventh-generation Southerner, Wrinkle is the 2013 recipient of the Dora Franklin Finley African-American Heritage Trail of Mobile Griot Award for outstanding contribution as a storyteller of diverse cultural heritage. Her award-winning documentary called “broken\ground,” made with Chris Lawson about the racial divide in her historically conflicted hometown, was featured on NPR’s “Morning Edition” and was a winner at the Council on Foundations Film Festival.

This new gallery in the Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center offers a year-round schedule of exhibitions of artistic works, artifacts, textiles and more from permanent collections held by UA, as well as works by faculty, students, and guest artists and designers.

The University of Alabama Gallery is open Monday-Friday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. except the first Friday of each month, when it will be open from noon-8 p.m. For more information about the gallery, phone 205/342-2060.

UA’s sponsoring departments are part of the College of Arts and Sciences, the University’s largest division and the largest liberal arts college in the state. Students from the College have won numerous national awards including Rhodes Scholarships, Goldwater Scholarships and memberships on the USA Today Academic All American Team.

Contact

Bobby Mathews, UA media relations, bwmathews1@ua.edu, 205/348-4956; Kelli Wright, 205/348-8539 , khwright@as.ua.edu

Source

Josh Rothman, jrothman@as.ua.edu, 205/348-1866