Cultural Arts Center Gallery Unveils Next Exhibition

Margaret Wrinkle
Margaret Wrinkle will read from her critically acclaimed novel “Wash” (cover image appears elsewhere on page) at the Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center on November 5.

The next exhibition in The University of Alabama Gallery in the Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center, “Wash by Margaret Wrinkle: Seeing Across the Divide,” features a series of photographs taken by Wrinkle at slavery-related sites throughout the South while researching her critically acclaimed novel, “Wash.”

Published by Grove/Atlantic, Wrinkle’s novel “Wash” reexamines American slavery in ways that challenge many contemporary assumptions about race, power, history, and healing as it carries the reader from the American South to West Africa.

Wrinkle paired each of her photographs with short passages from the novel to give a sense of the story, its characters, and the landscape within which they lived.

“I put words together with images to encourage viewers and readers to think about different kinds of literacy: textual literacy, visual literacy, spiritual literacy and emotional literacy,” she said. “There are many different ways to read, and our survival depends on learning all of them.”

The exhibit will be displayed Nov. 5–15. An opening reception, reading, and book signing will be held Nov. 5 at 5:30 p.m. at the gallery, located in The Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center at 620 Greensboro Avenue in downtown Tuscaloosa.

cover of the novel "Wash"This event and exhibition are sponsored by UA’s Summersell Center for the Study of the South, and co-sponsored by UA’s departments of American studies, art and art history, English, and gender and race studies.  For more information, visit http://www.scss.ua.edu

This new gallery in the Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center offers a year-round schedule of exhibitions of artistic works, artifacts, textiles and more from permanent collections held by UA, as well as works by faculty, students, and guest artists and designers.

The University of Alabama Gallery is open Monday-Friday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. except the first Friday of each month, when it is open from noon to 8 p.m. For more information about the gallery, call (205) 342-2060.

Read more about Wrinkle and the “Wash” project at the UA news site.