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Here at Alabama Contemporary, every exhibition we mount is a new line in the story of Alabama. We do work that is simultaneously hyper-local and globally relevant. We measure impact evenly between what we can do for our community and what we can do for the innovators, the visionaries who create our culture. When we take a risk to support an unknown artist or a new idea, everyone benefits.

This year Charles Edwards Williams taught us about Radical Forgiveness. Sally Heller taught us about industrial waste. Abe Partridge showed us what ‘meeting a community where they are’ can truly mean. Soynika Edwards Bush showed us how deeply connected we are, even when we believe we are very different. Borderwaters opened our minds to the idea that borders are more than geography, but lines drawn across our lived experiences, sometimes at great cost. And the Soil exhibition provided a difficult but important space for the community to reconcile the deep harm racism has done here in Mobile, and to imagine what healing could look like.

A scarcity of institutional support for living artists is both our reason for being and our greatest hurdle. Our success requires the idea of what is possible to expand beyond the stereotypes surrounding this place. And it depends on individual advocacy for a new idea – the belief that our resilience and health as a community is contingent on our willingness to grow and challenge the status quo. We support artists because they show us who we can be.

We need your support to keep supporting artists. There are exciting and much larger plans for our organization. In order to achieve those plans we need your buy-in. This year, make an investment in the intelligence, creativity, and bravery of the South. This isn’t about changing the South, but about supporting a culture that reflects our best possible selves. Investing here is acknowledging that we are so much deeper than anyone gives us credit for.

 

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