Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts announces upcoming spotlight exhibitions

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WSFA) - The Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts will feature a series of exhibitions highlighting signature works by individual artists.

“The Spotlight series tells new and innovative stories about American art by expanding notions of art and design to include functional objects and their unique contexts,” the museum said in a the announcement.

The exhibits will feature pieces ranging from the 19th century to the contemporary moment, and representing an array of materials and makers. Each of the exhibitions will feature art collectively curated by the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts and its three partner museums: the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut, the Columbia Museum of Art in Columbia, South Carolina, and the Mobile Museum of Art in Mobile, Alabama.

The first spotlight exhibition, from March 23-June 4, 2023, will feature works by quiltmaker and Alabama native Yvonne Wells. The museum will present two of Wells’ quilts - one portraying Helen Keller and another commemorating the Negro Baseball League.

Mississippi artist Dusti Bongé will be spotlighted from July 13-Oct. 22. The exhibition will highlight her large-scale abstract expressionist painting “Distillate of the Past” from the Mobile Museum of Art.

The exhibition from Nov. 16, 2023-March 17, 2024 will feature “Bureau” by Thomas Day. It is from the Columbia Museum of Art’s collection. This object demonstrates the accomplishments of a free Black cabinet maker in the face of restrictive conditions in the pre-Civil War era.

The final exhibition in this series, on display from April 11, 2024-Aug. 11, 2024, will feature a rarely seen textile from the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. It is a hooked rug designed by Alexander Calder and hooked by Leslie and Rufus Stillman that was made for a Marcel Breuer-designed modernist home in Connecticut.

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