Magic City Moments.com

This Magic City Moment brought to you by:

Plant Odyssey
2912 6th Avenue South
Lakeview
205.324.0566
www.LibbysPlantOdyssey.com

Wednesday, May 19 the Birmingham Museum of Art welcomed 60 people from 30 countries who became American citizens during a naturalization ceremony. These new citizens, whose countries of origin include everywhere from India to Poland, are all residents of the Northern District of Alabama, which encompasses the upper half of the state from Shelby County to Tennessee and from Mississippi to Georgia. The Honorable Sharon Lovelace Blackburn, Chief United States District Judge, presided over the ceremony, which was held outside the federal courthouse for the first time.

"I couldn't imagine a nicer place for this ceremony. We at the court plan to use the Museum for all future naturalization ceremonies," said Judge Blackburn. "I hope the new citizens will come back often to the Museum where they became American citizens."

Naturalization ceremonies occur two to three times a year in Birmingham, and the Museum looks forward to offering its unique space for future ceremonies. "We're honored to welcome these neighbors to the Museum and to American citizenship," said Gail Andrews, R. Hugh Daniel Director of the Birmingham Museum of Art. "The Museum offers so many ways to connect with the American experience through art. As these new citizens come to call America their home, we hope they'll consider the Birmingham Museum of Art a home as well."

While at the Museum, many guests visited the gallery of American art, where Samantha Kelly, Curator of Education, explained the history and meaning of one of the Museum's most celebrated paintings, "Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California" (1865) by Albert Bierstadt. "We hope that each of these new citizens will come back and visit this and other incredible works of art as they continue to explore what it means to be an American," said Kelly.

After the ceremony, the Museum presented each new citizen with a poster of a painting from the Museum's collection, Theodore Earl Butler's "Flags" (1918), which expresses a sense of American patriotism. Spanning the late 18th through mid-20th century, the Museum's collection of American painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts features paintings by Gilbert Stuart, Childe Hassam, and John Singer Sargent; sculptures by Hiram Powers and Frederic Remington; and important decorative pieces by Tiffany Studios and Frank Lloyd Wright. Among these works are several landscape paintings, including the beloved Bierstadt, that showcase the American landscape.

"The American landscape distinguishes this country and serves as one of the sources for our collective national identity," said Graham C. Boettcher, Ph.D., The William Cary Hulsey Curator of American Art. "The majesty of this country's wilderness can be found in abundance among the paintings on view in the Museum's gallery of American art. From George Inness's moonlit Virginia field to Albert Bierstadt's sun-drenched Yosemite Valley, the American landscape has the power to lift the spirit and inspire the mind. It is inextricably tied to who we are as a people."

All information provided courtesy of the Birmingham Museum of Art.