Two major Alabama foundations have supported the building of the Artist Residency and Visitor Support Center located on the Wallace grounds. The Mike and Jillian Goodrich Foundation awarded $75,000 over FY 23 and 24 for construction and The Daniel Foundation of Alabama awarded $35,000 to be spent in FY 23. We are grateful to both these donors for their role in making this much needed buiding a reality. This building has been a game changer for the Wallace Center, enabling more people to visit the site and for short term artist residency stays.
On February 24, 2024, we officially opened our Artist Residency and Visitor Center. The building offers space for short term residency stays, a kitchen for small events catering, bathroom facilities to support the main house, and office and meeting space. We are grateful to our funders for the Artist Residency/Visitor Center: the Alabama State Council on the Arts, the Mike and Gillian Goodrich Foundation, the Daniel Foundation of Alabama and generous private donors. The Hope Credit Union provided financing. Our architects are Hester and Associates and Kelley Landscape Architects, and our contractor is Douthit Builders.
The Alabama Humanities Alliance has awarded $10,000 to the Wallace Center for an mixed media exhibit Emancipation and the Struggle to Make Home in the Wallace House in fall 2024. It will be accompanied by a public lecture at the Datcher History House on the antebellum period in Harpersville and then by a panel discussion The Origins of Alabama's Black Freedom Struggle, 1865-1890 at the Beth-El Civil Rights Experience. This programming is our first exhibit in a series of historical interpretations. and will inform the use of virtual and augmented reality in a fuller house interpretation.
The Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham awarded $24,000 to the Wallace Center for “Preparing for Arts and Cultural Tourism at the Wallace House in Harpersville”. This grant allows us 1) to begin our planning process with the city of Harpersville to develop an arts and cultural tourism plan for the city and 2) to develop our experiential interpretation of the property for visitors to experience. These objectives are part of a long term project to have a multi-media experience for visitors to the house. We envison a future in which tourists visiting central Alabama come to understand the full reparative history of the Wallace plantation and reflect on what this experience means specifically to them. We also see that this boost to tourism will benefit the lives of local residents and economic development of the city.
This 2024 Fiscal Year, the Alabama State Council on the Arts has provided support to the Wallace Center for poet Salaam Green to provide a year of reparative poetry discussion and performance as she completes her volume Healing Harpersville for Pulley Press; for the opening and conversations around For Love, With Grief, by artist Elizabeth M. Webb with Salaam Green and the descendant community; and to develop an overarching conceptual design with plans for an experiential interpretation of the Wallace House and grounds.
Peter Datcher and Theo Perkins, two of our board members are featured in a panel discussion at the Rebecca J. Luker Stage, Center for the Arts, University of Montevallo, along with Elvie Schooley, founder of DRUM the program in Chilton County. The program is free. Registration is not required. Sunday, Feb. 4, 2-3:30 pm.
The Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Arts at Auburn University is presenting the Auburn Forum for Southern Art and Culture on February 3 from 1:30 to 6:30. Presenters include Elizabeth M. Webb (our resident artist), Lonnie Holley, Joy Harjo and Walter Hood. Registration required.
At the 2023 Homecoming, Klein Arts & Culture is celebrating its name change to The Wallace Center for Arts and Reconciliation. The name Klein was arbitrarily given to the house by the white Wallace family in the late 19th century when a name was required for the newly established postal address of the property. The Black Wallace family requested that the organization’s name be changed to reflect their name and the way they knew the house. In addition, the name encompasses the heritage of both the white and Black descendants and reflects the mission of our organization.
The Alabama Humanities Alliance will honor their 2023 Fellows, Drs. David Matthews and Imani Perry at a luncheon at the Grand Bohemian restaurant on October 23, 2023 at 11:30 am. Here’s the trailer for a short file on Healing History with interviews at the Wallace House.Following on, as part of AHA’s Healing History partnerships, the Wallace House and our work there will be featured in an on-site tour, with a bus departing at 3 pm from Birmingham. We are excited to be part of this AHA celebration. For further information and to purchase tickets, gohere.
Congratulations to Kyle Whitmire for his Pulitzer Prize for his State of Denial series for Al.com. His story on Confederate Mansions discussed the mission of Klein Arts & Culture at the Wallace House as a counterpoint to mansions funded by the state that glorify the Lost Cause. Thank you, Kyle Whitmire!
Klein Arts & Culture is honored to be invited to participate in the 2023 Resnick Aspen Action Forum, an invitation-only gathering of values-based leaders from across the world. The theme of this year’s forum is Courage, Healing and Repair. We are eager to learn about like-minded projects and to become part of a broader network. KAC will be represented by our cofounders and board members, Theo Perkins, Nell Gottlieb, and Tom Hoynes.
The Wallace House was featured in a film, The Intersection of Story and Place, made by Mark Slagle of 1504 and presented to architects from New York City at the Howl, the AIA’s first multimedia forum to explore storytelling and filmmaking as powerful tools for architects to create a more compelling, equitable, and sustainable built environment. Slagle moderated the event that also included stories told by those attending about the use of story telling in their practices. Other 1504 projects highlighted were the Hotel Peter and Paul and the Beth El Civil Rights Experience. Watch the short film here.
The Alabama State Council for the Arts is increasing the sustainability of Klein Arts & Culture through two awards for staff salaries, totaling $27,800. We have begun the recruiting process for a Program and Operations Director. Operating funding is difficult to raise, and we appreciate ASCA’s continuing support of Klein Arts & Culture.
The Alabama State Council for the Arts has awarded KAC $65,000 toward the construction of our Venue Support and Artist Residency Cottage. This building will provide two bathrooms with exterior entrances, a small kitchen for catering, and living space for artists and historians in short-term residencies. Ground will be broken in Spring 2023. We are currently engaged in fundraising for the match required for this grant.
On September 9, 2022, Theo Perkins and Nell Gottlieb shared information about Klein Arts & Culture with attendees of the 7th Annual Civic Institute, Public Trust & Collective Imagination. The Civic Institute is a project of the David Matthews Center for Civic Life in Montevallo. Their panel was titled: Where you are with what you’ve got: Building civic spaces in your neighborhood.
The Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham has awarded $15,000 for the period 7/1/22 to 6/31/23 to conduct cultural assets mapping, have local artists perform, and enhance the October 2022 homecoming. Creative placemaking provides the framework for this activity, which is directed toward reparative programming that facilitates racial reconciliation.
Wideman-Davis Dance will return for an 18 week residency in Harpersville between April 2023 to March 2024 with funding from the New Monuments Project of the Mellon Foundation. Migratuse Revisited will expand their model to include more community involvement and audience engagement, placing the Black narrative in antebellum history through dance. Klein Arts & Culture is proud to be their partner.
The Alabama State Council for the Arts has awarded $15,000 (10/1/2021-9/30/2022) to Klein Arts & Culture under the Alabama Arts Recovery Program to address our program losses during the pandemic. This was supplemented by a Sustainability Grant of $6,000 from South Arts to support our operations between 1/1 to 12/31/2022.
The Alabama Humanities Alliance has awarded $7,500 for the period 12/1/21 to 9/15/22 to Klein Arts & Culture to conduct three public panels: the history of the historic Wallace Plantation, issues in the reparative interpretation of plantation houses, and the design of experiential exhibits based on reparative interpretation, using the Wallace House as an example.
