From the January 2014 Desktop News | The University of Alabama’s two art galleries in downtown Tuscaloosa will kick off the new year with exhibitions of historic photographs and modern art.

The Paul R. Jones Gallery will hold its first exhibit Jan.10-Feb. 21, featuring photographs on loan from the Morgan County Archives that document the 1933 retrial of one of Alabama’s “Scottsboro Boys.” Last year, faculty and students in the College worked together to help facilitate historic legislation that would grant posthumous pardons to the Scottsboro Boys. In November, the State Board of Pardons and Paroles approved pardons for the remaining defendants.

In 1931, nine teenage African American men were accused of raping two white women in Paint Rock, Alabama. The cases were brought to the public’s attention following a series of rushed trials and biased juries, which ultimately led to death sentences – handed down in Scottsboro – for the defendants. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, reversed the verdicts and sent the cases back to Alabama for retrial.

This exhibition at the Jones Gallery follows the second trial of Haywood Patterson, one of the nine men, through the photographs of Decatur photographer, Fred Hiroshige.

The exhibit will include two guest speakers. On Feb. 6, Dr. Robin D.G. Kelley, the Gary Nash Professor of American History at UCLA, will speak at 7 p.m. in Gorgas Room 205. On Feb. 7, Dr. Dan T. Carter, author of “Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South,” will give a talk as part of a reception from 5-7:30 p.m. at the Jones Gallery.

An inaugural exhibition of works from the collection of University of Alabama alumni Jim and Myra Morgan will be on display Jan.16-March 7 at The University of Alabama Gallery in Tuscaloosa’s Cultural Arts Center. This exhibition features a selection of more than 40 works of art from the Morgan Collection that were donated in 2008 to the Sarah Moody Gallery’s Permanent Collection.

The late Jim and Myra Morgan founded the Morgan Gallery in Kansas City in the late 1960s. The Morgan Gallery celebrated practicing artists in the Midwest and brought in artists from across the country to forge an appetite for contemporary art among corporate and private collectors. The Morgans embraced experimentation, blurred the lines between fine and folk art, and attracted artists who might be regarded as the satirists of the art world of the 1970s.

The works on display are part of more than 150 works donated in 2007 to the University by the Morgan family.

The Paul R. Jones Gallery and The University of Alabama Gallery are open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and the First Fridays of the month until 8 p.m. For more information call the gallery at 205-345-3038 or call 205-342-2060.