The Department of Art’s Biggin Gallery announces the opening of A World Away, an exhibition of digital works and video installations by Rachel Clarke. The exhibit, which includes collaborations with Sam Parsons and Stephen Blumberg, opens on January 10 at 5 p.m. in room 005 Biggin Hall. The exhibition runs through Feb. 3. Clarke is a new media artist and assistant professor of new media in the Art Department at California State University, Sacramento. She works in digital imaging, time-based and interactive media. Her research explores the convergence of new technologies, human identity and organic systems. Clarke has exhibited internationally and throughout the United States. Gallery hours are 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday to Friday. For more information please contact Barb Bondy, exhibitions and lectures coordinator in the Department of Art, at (334) 844-3483.

The Essence of Line: French Drawings from Ingres to Degas

Dates: February 19 – May 14
Location: Birmingham Museum of Art, The Hulsey Gallery

This exhibition comprises 100 nineteenth-century French drawings by more than 75 artists from the collections of The Walters Art Museum and The Baltimore Museum of Art. Both collections were formed chiefly during the nineteenth century by private collectors of contemporary drawings. These collectors had a wide range of interests, including Orientalism, history, genre, landscape, and portraiture. Often the works were acquired directly from the artists. The remarkable breadth of the two collections offers a comprehensive survey of drawing during the nineteenth century: neoclassical landscapes through symbolist fantasies; sketches through highly finished narrative scenes; poignant views of peasant life through bawdy caricatures and social satire. These works illuminate the range of French art over the course of a century of innovation. Artists in the exhibition include Cézanne, Daumier, Degas, Delacroix, Ingres, Millet, Prud’hon, Redon, Seurat, and Toulouse-Lautrec, among others.

This show is especially recommended to those students traveling to Rome this spring By Professor Cheryl Morgan.

For More information please visit the Birmingham Museum of Art website.