Agnes (gallery)
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Agnes was a Birmingham, Alabama photography gallery from 1993 to 2001. Shawn Boley, Jon Coffelt 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 on December 5, 1994.
Agnes worked closely with Video Data Bank in Chicago Illinois for short film/vido screening which included work by Jim Cohen, Ana Mendieta and Sadie Benning among many others.
Notable exhibits
Melissa Springer's Julia Tutwiler Prison Series was Agnes' first exhibit. After eight years and 77 exhibitions the gallery closed in 2001. Alexandre Glyadelov's [1] Homeless in Bosnia with Médecins sans Frontières was the gallery's last exhibit.
Agnes worked with Visual AIDS striving to increase public awareness of AIDS through the visual arts. Agnes hosted its first "World AIDS Day" in 1992 with "Day Without Art" commemorated annually on the first day of December.
In 1995 and again in 1997 Agnes gave solo exhibitions to Volker Seding [2]. Seding was primarily known for his 40 years of photographing zoos around the world and for gradually changing the thought patterns of environmental designers who govern zoo design.
UPsouth curated by Anne Arrasmith, traveled to several venues across Birmingham, AL, including Space One Eleven, Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Visual Arts Gallery, and Agnes itself.
Artists
Agnes artists list included: Pinky Bass, Sadie Benning, Ruth Bernhard, Kevin Bubriski, Dan Budnik, Clayton Colvin, Paul Caponigro, Timothy Ely, Karen Graffeo, James Herbert (director), Jenny Holzer, Lee Isaacs, O. Winston Link, Spider Martin, Julie Moos, Hermann Nitsch, Ed Ruscha, Mary Ann Sampson, Jack Spencer, Maggie Taylor, Arthur Tress, Thomas Tulis, Jerry Uelsmann, Marie Weaver and Randy West (photographer).
External links
- Visual AIDS
- Day Without Art
- Complete listing of AGNES artists
- Information about AGNES Gallery's namesake