Director's Column

This winter has been a cold and wet one in the Deep South. That’s not unusual. North Mississippi’s persistent, iron grey skies this time of year can make one feel he is in the middle of an Ingmar Bergman movie, with angst the best one can hope for. But this winter has been extreme, as in much of the nation. We have been traveling widely, though, meeting people throughout the region in a variety of forums to represent the Center.

   The Arkansas Arts Center hosted a symposium to accompany the opening of the Myth, Memory, and Imagination exhibition of painting, photography, and sculpture of the South. The works are all in the collection of an extraordinary woman, Judy Norrell, the child of two members of the Arkansas Congress. She has gathered together the paintings of Clementine Hunter, Bernice Sims, and Eldridge Bagley, and the sculpture of the Reverend Herman Hayes and Willie Little. She collected the prints of the Farm Security Administration photographers of the 1930s and 1940s, and the more recent acclaimed photographers, William Eggleston and William Christenberry. The latter was at the symposium, and I enjoyed hearing this Alabamian admit that what he really had wanted to be was quarterback of the Crimson Tide football team.  He has done all right, though.

   My trips across the South provide great discoveries for me, and at the Arkansas exhibit I discovered the work of South Carolinian Jonathan Green, a favorite of Norrell’s and rightly so.  His painting The Passing of Eloise is a moving depiction of his grandmother’s funeral. He grieved 10 years before he could record this event, and his passion for his family and community come alive when viewing the work. Green was at the symposium, a young and altogether fresh African American perspective on the South.

   The Arkansas symposium would have been enough to set me thinking for a month, but I also went to two religious forums that were stimulating.  Northminister Baptist Church in Jackson, Mississippi, hosted a lectureship with Bill Leonard, the dean of the divinity school at Wake Forest University, and me. Bill recalled growing up Baptist, and we all reflected on the recent changes in the Southern Baptist Convention. Northminister witnesses for the Baptists tradition of the freedom of the individual soul and the local congregation, and the members are among the most curious and congenial friends I have made. The next week found me in Mobile, Alabama, giving a presentation as part of the Christus Lectureship at Spring Hill College, which has a sign up entering the campus, “The Jesuit College of the South.” I talked about the spirituality of the South, among an on-going group that heard many lectures each year about religion. It would have been great to have the Northminister members in dialogue with the wonderful people at Spring Hill--enriching us all.

   Finally, January’s cold winter saw Ann Abadie, Andy Harper, David Wharton, and me at Vanderbilt University, where we held another planning meeting for our Regional Humanities Center initiative. The good people at the Robert Penn Warren Center hosted us, and we had an audience of 50 or so discussing the needs and potentials for humanities work in the Deep South. 

   The diversity and richness of this one month’s experiences suggest something of the range of the Center’s work and interests. The Deep South is alive with cultural activity, and the Center is working to connect actively with many people and institutions to advance our common work.

Charles Reagan Wilson