News

Klein A&C Receives Two Grants in 2019

Klein Art & Culture was awarded the Peter H. Brink Leadership Fund grant by the National Trust for Historic Preservation in July, 2019. The purpose of the Brink Fund is to build the capacity of existing preservation organizations and to encourage collaboration among them. Georgette Norman, founding director of the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery, was selected to engage in board development with Klein Arts & Culture and, to date, has conducted interviews with each member of the founding board and she use this information to increase board capacity.

Then, in December 2019, the Alabama State Council on the Arts funded the Klein Descendants Speak project. Ms. Norman will continue to conduct interviews, this time with a focus on descendants telling the story of their family’s relationship to Klein, their history in the community, and the descendant’s hope for the future. These interviews will become the basis for a video installation concerning the history of Klein and the Harpersville community.

presentations

Klein Arts & Culture was a key feature of several presentations made by Board President Nell Gottlieb in 2019.   In February, 2019, she presented Nostos Algos: A Collaboration about Return at the College Art Association annual meeting in New York City.  She described her journey to the founding of Klein Arts & Culture in A Re-Membered Past: A Return to the Family Plantation at the Jung Center in Houston in March, 2019. Then, in July, 2019, she presented Klein Arts & Culture: Development of a Social Practice at the Intervention Mapping  Summer Course at the University  of Maastricht in the Netherlands.   In each of the talks, she related her art practice to the work of Klein Arts & Culture.  Nostos Algos, which can be translated as “the pain of return”, has been a guiding force both in her art exploration and in her desire to make the house, Klein, into a center for social justice through education, the arts, and culture.

UAB Bloom Studios Partnership

Bloom, a student-run design studio at the University of Alabama at Birmingham headed by professor Douglas Barrett, has selected Klein Arts & Culture as its client for Fall 2020.  Bloom Studio has a strong history of working with non-profit organizations to develop branding and materials/social media using sophisticated design.  Bloom worked with the Cahaba River Society and UA’s Center for Economic Development to explore the Cahaba Blueway through a branding and identity system that included signage, an iPhone app, and interpretative materials.  Another project focused on tourism and branding for Bibb County’s bicentennial with the development of brochures, maps, signage and banner.  We are looking forward to working with the students and faculty of Bloom Studios.  While we hope to work together in person, the project will be carried out using internet meetings if that is what is required.