AEIVA Presents In the Moment: Recent Acquisitions to AEIVA’s Permanent Collection

Opening: May 21, 5–7pm

AEIVA presents In the Moment: Recent Acquisitions to AEIVA’s Permanent Collection, featuring work by seventeen artists acquired over the past three years, much of which will be on view at AEIVA for the first time. Works by Alabama artists such as Pinky/MM Bass, Celestia Morgan, and Susan Fitzsimmons are shown alongside works by a wide range of nationally-recognized artists, including Katherine Bernhardt, Mokha Laget, Futoshi Miyagi, and others.

AEIVA’s collection consists of just over 2,000 works, with a focus on post-World War II modern and contemporary art in a broad range of disciplines. Like its exhibitions and programs, AEIVA’s collection cultivates a regional perspective, understood within broader cultural and historical contexts. The works gathered here are particularly attuned to the poetics of the everyday—from works incorporating vernacular craft traditions to those that reference pop culture and consumerism. Many possess a palpable sense of dramatic tension—whether narrative, material, or sociopolitical. They look to the interplay between memory and material, reality and imagination, offering textured reflections on the warp and weft of contemporary life.

This exhibition also speaks to the practice of collecting art in the moment that it’s made—an effort to identify works that register the present while continuing to accrue meaning into the future. It traces how AEIVA’s collection has been shaped through relationships with an extended community of artists, audiences, and supporters. In this way, collecting emerges as a practice informed by a shared investment in how the present is seen, held, and carried forward.

Katherine Bernhardt, Doritos + Socks + Basketballs, 2014. Acrylic and spray paint on canvas. Gift of Emily and Teddy Greenspan. Collection of the Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts, UAB.