Category: Birmingham

I don’t have any photos of this venue, but here’s some street art of the great John Lewis.

This was my first walkout of any venue in the United States in all my trips to the country over the last decade, or at least the first one that I can remember. Service in the US is nearly always impeccable, with anything going wrong nearly always promptly resolved. With a couple of hours before my train departed, I thought I’d try this venue although something didn’t feel quite right from some of the reviews. It is though part of a small chain and offers two of my favourite things, namely pizza and craft beer, so I persisted.

I had a short wait to be welcomed as the team member was greeting other customers, but she clearly didn’t want to be there and there was a minimal greeting offered. I have no idea why and I can’t judge as someone might have very challenging private issues that they’re dealing with, but I can’t say she was particularly personable at that moment. But she walked me to a table away from most of the other customers, which felt slightly odd and I did wonder whether she didn’t like single diners for some reason relating to tipping or something, but I’m long since unbothered by trying to second guess these things.

Anyway, when we arrived at the table it was dirty and she threw the menu on it whilst adding nothing more. I didn’t bother sitting down and walked out trying to attract as little attention as possible whilst doing so, hopefully with no-one noticing.

I instead went to Publix and got a Caesar salad ready for my train trip later that afternoon, I needed some sustenance given that it was the longest train journey I had ever taken at over 24 hours non-stop.

After a busy morning at the Birmingham Museum of Art, it was most definitely time for a beer. The Good People Brewing Company have large premises, including this substantial external beer garden.

The brewery is located opposite Regions Field, the home of the Birmingham Barons baseball team. This area of the city felt very different from the downtown area that I had spent the morning in, although it’s a short walk away. Money has been spent here and it seemed to have a rejuvenated feel to it, it was the only part of the city that I visited where I got this impression.

That looked suitably tempting. Also, I was delighted to see they not only had hangers at the bar (that’s one of my signs of an excellent pub) but also power points which was very useful as my phone battery was depleted after taking something like 386 photos at the gallery. Of which I’ve used about ten, but there we go….

The welcome was timely and seemed genuine, it was an inviting and comfortable atmosphere so I lingered here for quite a while. Actually, I thought the ambience was vibrant, which is sometimes my codeword for hinting that it felt like Fight Club, but here it did seem that customers were just excited to be at the venue and none were disruptive or annoying.

They were happy to do a flight of five various beer options, my favourites here were the Pineapple Tart sour and the Cherry & Almond sour. The brewery is known locally for its IPAs and they have a strong focus on those, as well as plenty of sour options as well.

And I ended the visit off with the brewery’s Coffee Oatmeal Stout which was very acceptable. The venue has Hotbox outside who offer street food most of the week, although on Mondays and Tuesdays there are rotating food trucks servicing the needs of drinkers. This was the only bar that I went to in Alabama, as although there were some tempting breweries and bars in Birmingham they were nearly all out of the centre and I didn’t have time to walk there. But, I certainly could have picked worse and it was a rather convivial afternoon.

I’m determined to get to the end of blogging this US trip and so I will have to content myself to posting about just four artworks that I was particularly engaged with at the Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama. These are pieces by:

Lorenzo Veneziano

Canaletto

Titus Kaphar

Pieter Neeffs the Younger

The above photo is of the sculpture garden area of the museum, located at the rear, that the friendly person at security told me not to miss. And she offered a lovely welcome, kindly putting my backpack by her desk so that my life on the move wasn’t stolen, as well as giving me an explanation of the gallery’s holdings. The welcome was personable and it felt like the gallery was just well managed.

The rest of my visit was as positive as the start of it, with everything well signed and easy to find, although I had been given a free map anyway. There was also no charge to access the gallery (and there never has been since they opened) although I was disappointed that it wasn’t a little busier given how strong many of the collections are. Everything worked in the gallery, whether that was the wi-fi or the on-line information that they have about their exhibits.

The gallery was open and bright, with plenty of seating for when visitors were just a little tired. Although the gallery has got that covered, their web-site notes:

“If you get a bad case of museum fatigue and want to sit down, no worries, you can still explore the BMA’s artworks on the smartguide by using the index”.

Whoever has written the gallery’s web-site has impressive communications skills, this place exudes a welcoming vibe. Even their section on photos, which is sometimes a barrage of things that can’t be done, has been crafted to show just how much they encourage photos and engagement.

This is very much a museum that really needs more than one visit, the collections are too substantial to properly do them justice in just one day. I lingered mostly on the paintings, but there were also collections on pottery (the museum has an extensive array of Wedgwood pieces), pre-Colombian art, Native American art, Asian art, African art and many more.

The museum was opened in 1959, which feels relatively late for a nationally important institution, although it had origins from early clubs and exhibitions. Birmingham as a city has had some difficult decades, so it is perhaps fortunate that this institution was established in the growth years when more things perhaps felt possible. However, it seems to have been well financed by the city and they were able to open a new building in 1993, which is the one where they’re located now.

The reviews for the museum are nearly all impeccable, although I noticed a couple from people who have got muddled up with Birmingham in the UK and left comments for the wrong place. And a few angry people were furious that the gallery had a policy on masks, a typical no-win situation for them. But amongst those annoyed visitors, there are tens of thousands of glowing positives for the work of the staff.

I came here as the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute’s web-site said they couldn’t deal with my bag and although I was disappointed not be able to see their collections as I was deliberately in the city to learn more about the history of the civil rights movement in Alabama, this replacement museum certainly didn’t disappoint in any way. A huge bundle of joy in the centre of Birmingham.

I’ll have to be careful not to spend several weeks writing about artworks at the Birmingham Museum of Art, but this was another of my favourites from their collections. It’s of Antwerp Cathedral and was painted by Pieter Neeffs the Younger (1620-1675/1685) in 1648. The panel by the painting at the gallery notes the tall painted altarpieces along the columns of the central nave and they look really rather glorious, it’s a shame that changes in taste and the Reformation movement saw much of this swept away. I’ve never been to Antwerp, but the panel also notes that some of these survive to this day, but some were lost as religious doctrine evolved.

It’s the clarity of the painting that I like, there’s plenty to see when looking closely so there’s plenty of human interest. It’s also a reminder of the time before churches and cathedrals often cluttered up their naves with seating, something only recently being reversed in many religious buildings. Not quite visible in this bottom photo, but visible in the main image, but I like the gravedigger busy making preparations to what I assume is adding a body to a tomb. This isn’t the only painting that the artist made of the cathedral as I’ve seen others, but as he was a local it would have provided him with plenty of inspiration.

The painting was purchased with the help of the Art Fund and donations from Mr and Mrs William T Ratliff. There’s more about the artwork at https://www.artsbma.org/collection/interior-of-antwerp-cathedral/.

This is certainly different, it’s an artwork by Titus Kaphar from 2016 entitled ‘Unfit Frame’. The purpose of the artwork is to make the viewer think about how eighteenth century British art told the story of the time from the perspective of the wealthy landowners and business magnates. As the description by the artwork notes:

“The story of English art in the 1700s as told by the works in this gallery is lopsided. It masks an important aspect of British history by not referencing its colonies and its deep involvement in the human trafficking of enslaved people. In many instances, this created the wealth that allowed the people portrayed here to commission those works in the first place”.

This is inevitably true, only the wealthy could afford portraits to be painted and they were hardly likely to want to send artists to slave colonies somewhere else in the world. I’m probably quite woke, but I don’t see that as a bad thing, as I think that galleries have an obligation to try and tell a story and they shouldn’t be scared of that. Equally, I’m not sure that the idea some galleries have of trying to hide artworks is always entirely useful, it’s almost worse to tell no story at all as it’s not clear what that achieves. This artwork is prominently placed, it’s eye-catching and it comes with a clear and positive message. As an art gallery I was immensely impressed what they were doing in a general sense, so I wasn’t surprised to see them tackle this with equal competence.

The imagery is of Elihu Yale (1649-1721) who the museum names as a British slave trader. I’m not knowledgeable enough about this, but this precise claim doesn’t appear to be the view of historians that I’ve read, although his wealth was linked to the slave trade so there is a very clear connection in that regard. Either way, I think it’s an interesting debate and encouraging people to discover more about how the slave trade worked and how it created wealth, along creating misery, is an important part of the story. Yale University is today named after him as he financed one of the early buildings that was part of the college.

The broom in the artwork is meant to suggest how matters can be swept under the rug, with the books relating to Elihu Yale, slavery, empire and privilege. It’s one of those artworks which works on a number of levels, it’s interesting just to look at it, it has a depth of messaging to it and also I think inspires those who engage with it to find out more.

This is part of my running theme of trying to see as many of Canaletto’s artworks as possible, made rather more difficult by the scattering of his works around so many museums and galleries around the world. There is of course the immense depth of detail in his works and how they have captured a snapshot of Venice in time. But there’s something more exciting that they were often collected by those on their European Grand Tour, a chance for the upper classes to tour the continent in a bid to learn more about other countries and cultures.

What is attractive to me about this concept of the European Grand Tour is not just that it remains an interesting excursion and adventure today, but that it must have been something of a culture shock to the travellers at the time. I understand that the participants on these expensive tours were often wealthy and not exactly sheltered to culture, but there was no Lonely Planet guide or tourist services to advise on what museums to go to. These countries might have been used to travellers, but it was still rare enough not to be common and so there was little compromise on food, language or culture. That means these Grand Tours would have been a true adventure and I can see why it was something that many travellers looked back on with fondness throughout their lives. The travellers often had guides, or cicerones, to help them, but it would still have felt very different to what they were used to.

This is what would have certainly set the classes apart in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as those fortunate enough to go travelling were expected to report back on their experiences. To anyone from the middle or working classes, they would have just had to listen and dream of doing similar. I’m sure many would have felt no connection or interest in travelling to countries such as Italy, but many must have equally felt quite jealous and wished they could see all of these things that were discussed. Unfortunately for them, there were no £9.99 fares available to Italy at the time with Ryanair.

But, I’ve digressed along another flight of fancy of mine. The painting, as I’ve mentioned, is by Canaletto (1697-1768) and was painted in the late 1720s, likely for someone on a Grand Tour to take home. The painting is another gift from the Samuel H Kress Foundation, something that I’ve already made reference to. The museum was given the artwork in 1961, but it had been in the hands of a private collection in England until 1931 and it had likely always been there since it was originally purchased. I don’t know, but perhaps it was handed down the generations following the original traveller and then they had to sell the painting as part of the great sell off of country houses and contents in the early twentieth century.

Regardless of its history though, it’s another wonderful painting that is as near to a photograph of eighteenth century Venice as we’re likely to get and I’m glad that Alabama has this in their state.

I remember standing in Birmingham thinking it felt quite odd for this Italian painting from around 1370 to have ended up in a room in a quiet museum in Alabama. The more recent part of this story is that it’s the legacy of Samuel H. Kress (1863-1955) who built up an immense collection of Italian paintings and then gave many of them away to museums up and down the United States in a bid to help educate and inform visitors. This museum received 34 paintings, 2 sculptures, 13 pieces of decorative furniture and 4 pieces of decorative art.

The formidable Birmingham Museum of Art has carefully placed its entire collection on-line, which makes it much easier to get an understanding of each of the artworks. This piece was on display at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC between 1939 and 1952 before being returned to Kress who gifted it to the museum here in 1961. Prior to 1930 it was owned by Riccardo Gualino (1879-1964) of Monferrato who was an Italian business magnate and art collector. Where it had been since it was painted by Lorenzo Veneziano, a Venetian, in around 1370 the museum doesn’t know.

I don’t have sufficient knowledge of medieval art to be able to add much, although Bonhams recently sold a work of his for not far short of £2 million and they noted:

“A remarkably inventive artist of extraordinary talent, Lorenzo Veneziano was indisputably the leading Venetian painter of the second half of the 14th century and his impact on later Venetian painting was both profound and widespread. He was instrumental in instigating the significant move in Venetian art towards the Gothic style, turning away from those old fashioned Byzantine models that had previously dominated”.

What I have seen before, something I learned in Florence, is the blue colour used by Italian artists of this period and it’s derived from lapis lazuli. It was expensive to acquire and frequently used with the clothing worn by the Virgin Mary. To my untrained eye this is executed well and the face of the Virgin Mary has a depth of character to it. I get swept away with history too often when looking at artworks like this, I can’t help wondering where it has been for the last 700 years. I assume it was originally for a church or even for a private chapel, looked at for generations. Then a new audience would have been intrigued by it when it came to the United States and went on display in Washington DC.

There’s plenty more about this painting at https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/3546.