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Photo: Birmingham Museum of Art, CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Visual art from all over the world, from ancient Egyptian to contemporary American. In particular, its Asian section is considered the best in the southeastern U.S.
The Birmingham Museum of Art is a museum in Birmingham, Alabama. Its collection includes more than 24,000 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, and decorative arts representing various cultures, including Asian, European, American, African, Pre-Columbian, and Native American. The museum is also home to some Renaissance and Baroque paintings, sculptures, and decorative arts from the late 13th century to c. 1750.
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The museum presents the athletic history of the state of Alabama, and is one of the biggest in the U.S with over 6,000 pieces of sports memorabilia.
Founded in 1978, the museum part opened in 1993 with exhibits from instruments to dresses on display. Of course you also get to experience the music itself in jazz performances, workshops and courses.
This four-acre park was named for a local World War I hero, but is best known as the place where the climactic confrontation between the attack dog- and firehose-wielding Birmingham police and fire departments, led by Public Works Commissioner "Bull" Connor, and the student demonstrators from the SCLC, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, took place. The park was rededicated in 1992 as a "place of revolution and reconciliation" in commemoration of these pivotal events, and now contains a number of sculptural exhibits. Notable among those is Four Spirits, unveiled in 2013 as a memorial to the young victims of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing (read on).
On September 15, 1963, in the aftermath of the Birmingham campaign (and at the beginning of the first school year in which the city's public schools were integrated), four members of the Ku Klux Klan bombed this oldest African-American church in Birmingham with dynamite, killing four young girls at choir practice and further outraging the nation and solidifying support in Congress for civil rights legislation. The church was rebuilt and remains in operation today, welcoming visitors both to Sunday services (10:45AM) and to the basement exhibition space featuring historical photographs and displays related to the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham.
The end of August sees the Historic 4th Avenue Business District, once the most prominent African-American commercial center in the city, swing to the strains of jazz music courtesy of a bevy of acts both locally-based and nationally-known. Bring the youngsters down to the Kids' Zone, learn to swing dance, or tuck in to a meal from one of Birmingham's best food trucks (they don't call it the "Taste" of 4th Avenue for nothing!)
Numerous performances including concerts, comedians and movies take place at this 2,200-seat, exquisitely preserved old vaudeville and movie palace built by Paramount in 1927.