The Collaborative | The DMV Collects the DMV
The Kreeger Museum
On view October 26, 2024 - February 1, 2025
HEMPHILL is pleased to share The Collaborative | The DMV Collects the DMV on view at The Kreeger Museum through February 1, 2025.
This exhibition is presented under The Collaborative, a program developed by The Kreeger Museum in 2021 to support Washington-area artists.
HEMPHILL Artists Featured:
Rush Baker IV, Leon Berkowitz, William Christenberry, Steven Cushner, Gene Davis, Mary Early, Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi, Jacob Kainen, Kevin MacDonald, Renée Stout, Julie Wolfe
The Curatorial Imagination of Walter Hopps
The Menil Collection
Mar 24 – Aug 13, 2023
Main Building
HEMPHILL is pleased to share the inclusion of William Christenberry's, Fruit Stand Sidewalk, Memphis, Tennessee, 1962, in The Curatorial Imagination of Walter Hoppson view at The Menil Collection through August 13, 2023.
What if Hale County, Ala., Is the Heart of America?
Margaret Renkl for The New York Times
February 20, 2023
NASHVILLE — Like nearly all the hurry-past places in this vast country, the Alabama most people experience is only what can be glimpsed from the window of a car on the way to somewhere else. Hale County is a little different. For nearly 90 years, this county in the Alabama Black Belt has been chronicled in the work of some of this country’s most celebrated artists.
“Desire Paths: William Christenberry & RaMell Ross” brings together two of them in an exhibition at Pace Gallery in New York City through Saturday. Mr. Ross, an interdisciplinary artist, moved to Hale County in 2009. His transcendent 2018 documentary film, “Hale County This Morning, This Evening,” was nominated for an Academy Award. He counts Mr. Christenberry as a major influence.
Mr. Christenberry, who grew up in Alabama and died in 2016, felt the same way about the photographer Walker Evans and the writer James Agee. Their staggeringly original book “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men” emerged from a three-week visit to Hale County in 1936.
In Hale County, Alabama, Two Visions of Place
The New York Times
By Siddhartha Mitter
January 12, 2023
[Hale County] is where William Christenberry, who grew up in nearby Tuscaloosa with roots in the county, returned each summer for four decades, beginning in the 1960s, making quiet images of desolate buildings in landscape that have become photography canon.
RaMell Ross is Hale County’s latest visual chronicler and, as he puts it, “liberated documentarian.” He moved to Greensboro, Ala., in 2009 and lived there continuously for three years, teaching in a G.E.D. program, coaching basketball and photographing. Though now a professor at Brown University, he has made the county a long-term home and the fulcrum of his art projects.
William Christenberry Studio Tours
Saturday, October 8, 2022, and Saturday, October 15, 2022 from 1:30-2:30PM
Local non-profit, District Bridges Cleveland Park is hosting a fundrasing event featuring a chance to win the rare opportunity for a guided tour of Bill Christenberry’s Cleveland Park studio.
William Christenberry Acquisition: National Gallery of Art
HEMPHILL is pleased to share the acquisition of William Christenberry's Memory Form II by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
William Christenberry (1936–2016) is best known for his artistic exploration of place, in particular the Black Belt region of Alabama, where he spent his childhood in Hale County. Working in a wide variety of media, including painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, and assemblage, Christenberry focused on architecture, abandoned structures, and nature, and he studied the psychology and effects of place and memory. The National Gallery of Art has acquired the sculpture Memory Form II (1997–1998), a gift from Stephen Bennett Phillips in honor of Sandra Deane Christenberry, the artist’s widow.
Ways of Seeing: Buildings and Monuments
Birmingham Museum of Art: October 5, 2020 - March 14, 2021
“This show is also connecting Alabama artists to our global collection. William Christenberry is a perfect example of that. ‘Ways of Seeing: Buildings and Monuments’ shows his work alongside the work of a number of other artists who aren’t as connected to Alabama.
In that sculpture, Christenberry is expressing his feelings about Alabama and Hale County in general. I think this show is an interesting place to think about our very local context in Birmingham and our local context in the state of Alabama right now, through art which is exciting.”
– Kate Crawford, Curator of American Art, Birmingham Museum of Art
Read "Ways of Seeing" connects Alabama + worldwide artists — why we're drawn to it here.
Click here to learn more about Ways of Seeing: Buildings and Monuments.
"In the Galleries," Mark Jenkins, The Washington Post, December 11, 2020.
William Christenberry's 2020 exhibition at HEMPHILL was reviewed by Mark Jenkins for The Washington Post.
"Like Warhol, Christenberry pondered consumer products, although with an emphasis on regional brands. A battered sign for Tops Snuff is the subject of three silk-screens, their printing roughened with sand and coffee grounds."
Read "In the Galleries: Perspectives on blending culture and identity" here.
William Christenberry, Exhibition – VIDEO
Created in conjunction with the William Christenberry exhibition at HEMPHILL, this video surveys the three sculptures featured in the show; "Night Spot," "Roadside Tableaux," and "Southern Monument XXII."
Artist: William Christenberry
Copyright: HEMPHILL Artworks
Photography & Video Editing: Hannah Davis
Music: As I Am - composed and performed by Kate Amrine on flugelhorn
Elegy - composed by Jessica Rudman, performed by Kate Amrine on trumpet
Both pieces are featured on Kate's first album As I Am
For more information about the composers please visit jessicarudman.com/ and kateamrine.com/
Photo by Jerry Siegel (jerry@jerrysiegel.com)
William Christenberry
For Six Decades, William Christenberry Captured The Ramshackle Vernacular Of The South
02/21/2020
by Zachary Fine, Art in America
35 Days
In the galleries: A colorful survey of Washington artists
July, 29, 2017
Mark Jenkins, The Washington Post
35 Days is "a museum-worthy survey of D.C. art."
35 Days
35 Days
June 24, 2017
Stephanie Rudig, Washington City Paper
"This isn’t just a Color School roundup, however: The show includes artists deploying color to completely different ends, like the trippy pattern-based work of Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi, as well as some varying landscape photography artists like Anne Rowland and William Christenberry."
William Christenberry
William Christenberry at Hemphill Fine Arts, Reviewed
July 3, 2015
Kriston Capps, Washington City Paper
"Grace and rot are twinned in Christenberry’s photos."
William Christenberry
Artist Spotlight: William Christenberry
June 21, 2015
Clarissa Wittenberg, District Journal
"This is not really an art review; this is a reverence, an adoration."
William Christenberry
William Christenberry at Hemphill
June 12, 2015
Caroline Jones, Washington City Paper
"In his latest show at Hemphill, viewers will be able to see the South as its cities have evolved from quiet streets dotted with retro cars to major urban centers over the course of Christenberry’s career."
William Christenberry
After a lifetime of capturing what was, Christenberry faces what is
June 11, 2015
Neely Tucker, The Washington Post
"The show features 26 pieces, from his iconic large-format photographs of fading Southern buildings to the smaller snapshots made with his legendary Kodak Brownie."
REPRESENT
At Hemphill Fine Arts, a retrospective show that's bigger than the gallery
November 15, 2013
Mark Jenkins, The Washington Post
"Several mini-shows nestle within “Represent,” Hemphill Fine Arts’s 20th-anniversary exhibition."
William Christenberry: Assembled Memory
Galleries: William Christenberry’s Southern roots show in ‘Assembled Memory’
October 4, 2012
Mark Jenkins, The Washington Post
"William Christenberry has lived in Washington for more than 40 years, but he still regularly sifts the soil of his childhood home, rural Alabama. The South nurtures, inspires and probably terrifies him, as it has other noted artists and writers from the region."
William Christenberry: Assembled Memory
Reviewed: William Christenberry at Hemphill Fine Arts
September 12, 2012
Louis Jacobson, Washington City Paper
"Models of humble buildings covered in a layer of creamy white? Got ‘em. Ridiculously rusted road signs? Yep. Detailed images of KKK hoods? They’re here, too."
Viewing Rm.
"Viewing Rm." at Hemphill Fine Arts
February 4, 2011
Louis Jacobson, Washington City Paper
"The exhibit is variegated, but like any good combine painting (and those are included too) it coheres pretty well despite itself, as giants like Robert Rauschenberg mix with such local figures as Joseph Mills, Mingering Mike and Colby Caldwell."
Viewing Rm.
Familiar favorites: Once more, with feeling
January 28, 2011
Jessica Dawson, The Washington Post
"Here hang big, striking works by Tom Downing and Jacob Kainen. Here, too, are precious works on paper by Al Jensen and Alma Thomas. That Eugene Atget picture of the taxidermist's vitrine? I'll take it."
William Christenberry: Vintage Kodak Brownies
William Christenberry's Kodak Brownie snapshots capture reality of South
February 14, 2010
Blake Gopnik, The Washington Post
"In the photos at Hemphill, you can almost feel the moment when Christenberry, on yet another trip home, spots a church or a Coke sign or a car that interests him, squares it up in his Brownie and snaps a record of it."
William Christenberry: Vintage Kodak Brownies
William Christenberry at Hemphill Fine Arts
February 5, 2010
Louis Jacobson, Washington City Paper
"Is there any visual artist whose work is shown more often in Washington galleries than William Christenberry’s? Probably not, yet seeing his 13-image exhibit at Hemphill Fine Arts, one has to admit his work usually merits another look."