The Paul R. Jones Museum will extend the popular exhibition Charlie Lucas: Talking to the Ancestors through April 30, 2021. Jones Museum director Daniel White said, “Because of COVID restrictions, we have decided to extend Charlie Lucas’ show to give our community more of an opportunity to see his exhibit.”
See an online preview of the exhibition.
The iconic, self-taught artist, Charlie Lucas, is the youngest of a pantheon of outsider artists who rose to public attention in the latter part of the twentieth century. Lucas bridges a couple of generations of artists, said museum director Daniel White, “Starting with Bill Traylor, then Jimmie Lee Sudduth and Mose T, Charlie is the last in a long lineage of black folk artists in Alabama that began over 100 years ago.” In his own family, Lucas is the descendent of several generations of artisans and craftspeople, including his grandfather and great grandfather who were blacksmiths. He traces his work directly from them.”
Lucas’ work has been included in early, transformative exhibitions of self-taught, outsider artists including the High Museum of Art’s groundbreaking 1988 exhibition, Outside the Mainstream: Folk Art in Our Time. His work was part of Passionate Visions of the American South: Self-Taught Artists from 1940 to the Present, 1993; Pictured in My Mind: Contemporary American Self-Taught Art, Birmingham Museum of Art, 1995, and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art’s group show Ogun Meets Vulcan: Iron Sculpture of Alabama with Thornton Dial, Lonnie Holley, Ronald Lockett and Joe Minter in 2007. Lucas’ work has appeared in numerous solo and group exhibitions over the last four decades including the New Orleans Museum of Art, Birmingham Museum of Art, Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and Rosa Parks Museum and Library at Troy University-Montgomery. Original news release here.
This exhibition is generously funded in part by the Alabama State Council on the Arts.
The Paul R. Jones Museum is an essential part of the education and development of UA students and our community. Admission to the gallery is free. The gallery is open to the public with reduced capacity, limited to ten (10) visitors at a time. Visitors must wear face coverings inside the gallery and maintain a minimum distance of six feet from others. Hours are Monday-Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Call the museum at (205) 345-3038 or email the director for more information. The Paul R. Jones Museum is located at 2308 Sixth Street, in downtown Tuscaloosa, one block from the Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center.
For more information about The University of Alabama’s programs in art history and studio art, visit our Degree Programs page.