Directory

Celestia Morgan was appointed assistant professor of art in 2022 after being named a College of Arts & Sciences Dean’s postdoctoral research associate in 2020. Morgan works across several artistic mediums, incorporating sculpture, map-making and community engagement into her photography and video work to explore systemic racism through racial zoning practices and environmental injustice.

An expanded version of her MFA thesis exhibition, REDLINE, became a solo exhibition at the Birmingham Museum of Art in 2019-2020. Photographs from that work have been included in exhibitions at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, the National Public Housing Museum in Chicago, Juxtaposition Arts in Minneapolis, the Mobile (Ala.) Museum of Art and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, and have been written about or published in the New York Times, Lenscratch, Bitter Southerner and Burnaway, among others. Her work also has been featured in the Southern Foodways Alliance journal Gravy. Her website is here.

Morgan received the MFA in photography from The University of Alabama, the BFA in photography from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the associate degree in elementary education from Lawson State Community College. She has been a photography instructor in the UA department of art and art history and taught art in the Birmingham City Schools.

Exhibitions

Portraits of Alabama: Photographs from the Do Good Fund, International Arts Center, Troy University, Troy, Ala., October 24-November 18, 2022, curated by Will Jacks

Celestia Morgan: Disparities, Paul R. Jones Museum, Tuscaloosa, Ala., March 4 – May 20, 2022

Dear Black Son Portrait Project, public sites around Birmingham, Ala., May 25, 2020 – ongoing

Distances: Tia-Simone Gardner, Stacey Holloway, Celestia  Morgan, curated by Peter Prinz, Alabama Contemporary Art Center, Mobile, Ala., June 11 – August 28, 2021

JUSTINJUST, Ann Arrasmith Gallery, Space One Eleven, Birmingham, Ala., April 16-May 28, 2021 (group exhibition)

Celestia Morgan: REDLINE, solo exhibition, Birmingham Museum of Art, Oct. 5, 2019-Feb. 16, 2020

New Southern Photography curated by Richard McCabe, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, October 6, 2018-March 10, 2019

Contemporary Alabama Photography, Mobile Museum of Art, curated by Richard McCabe, March 10-Nov. 12, 2017

Red Line: Celestia Morgan MFA Exhibition, Sarah Moody Gallery of Art, Tuscaloosa, April 21-May 26, 2017

Of Women By Women: Selections from The Do Good Fund, The Light Factory Photo Arts Center, Charlotte, N.C., June 22 – August 5, 2017

Passage: Celestia Morgan MA Exhibition, Sella-Granata Art Gallery, Tuscaloosa, April 18-May 3, 2016

News & Events

Burnaway review, “Celestia Morgan at the Birmingham Museum of Art,” Madeleine Seidel, Jan. 31, 2020

“a visually impressive exhibition that merges art, activism, and the archive to excavate the collective history of a city’s sins. Steeped in a rigorous conceptual practice, Morgan’s photographs and the accompanying education initiatives illustrate the pitfalls of urban development.” — Burnaway

Artist talk/panel discussion: Redlining BHM, Birmingham Museum of Art, Oct. 15, 2019

New York Times’ “Lens” blog featured Titusville

Celestia Morgan, image from “Passages,” MA Exhibition, Apr 18-May 3, 2016, Sella-Granata Art Gallery