Selections from $1.5 Million Art Collection to be Displayed at UA Gallery

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — A selection of contemporary fine art prints from the William and Sara Hall Collection will be on display at The University of Alabama Gallery in the Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center April 10-June 10.

The Halls donated the $1.5 million collection to UA’s Sarah Moody Gallery of Art in 2014.

An opening reception and exhibition walk-through with William Hall and William Dooley, director of the Sarah Moody Gallery of Art and associate professor in UA’s department of art and art history, will be held Friday, April 10 from 5:30-7:30 p.m. at the gallery.

The exhibit and reception are free and open to the public.

The William and Sara Hall collection includes more than 475 signed, limited-edition artists’ prints that the Halls collected during the last 25 years while William Hall has worked as a master printer at the esteemed Pace Editions Inc. Pace is one of the largest publishers of contemporary fine arts prints in the United States. Hall is working on projects with artists April Gornik and James Turrell.

Hall, originally from Red Level, received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting from UA in 1973 and a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting and printmaking from the University of Texas in 1976.

“The collection represents my career as a printer,” William Hall said. “When Sara and I were thinking about what we wanted to do with it, we thought it should exist as a body of work and not be broken up. As a collection at The University of Alabama, it’s available as a resource. It can be studied and exhibited as a reflection of a major print publisher in New York during a certain time period.”

During his time at Pace, Hall worked with many internationally acclaimed and lesser-known contemporary artists including Jennifer Bartlett, Donald Baechler, David Bates, Richmond Burton, Chuck Close, Jim Dine, Tara Donovan, Helen Frankenthaler, Jane Hammond, Zhang Huan, Alfred Leslie, Robert Mangold, Kiki Smith, James Turrell and more.

A broad range of printmaking processes can be seen among the pieces selected for the UA Gallery installation.

“The William and Sara Hall Collection is a major addition to the Sarah Moody Gallery of Art Permanent Collection,” said Dr. Robert Olin, dean of UA’s College of Arts and Sciences. “It brings to our community a unique collection of fine print works by many of the world’s most respected contemporary artists.

“Likewise, it offers us a remarkably broad study of the fine art and craftsmanship of well-known master printer and UA alumnus William Hall. We are most grateful to Bill and Sara Hall for permanently entrusting this valuable collection to The University of Alabama.”

This exhibition was organized and produced by the Sarah Moody Gallery of Art with support from the Farley Moody Galbraith Support Fund.

The University of Alabama Gallery 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 UA Gallery is located at 620 Greensboro Ave. in downtown Tuscaloosa. It is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. and the first Fridays of the month until 8 p.m.

For more information, phone the gallery at 205/345-3038 or 205/342-2060.

The UA Gallery, department of art and art history and the Sarah Moody Gallery of Art are part of UA’s 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 and Goldwater Scholarships.