The Brooks Museum has grouped shows with works by Winslow Homer, William Christenberry, and Robert King into an Americana-themed super exhibit. Though the shows are collectively titled "Picturing America", the America that's depicted in the works is a decidedly Southern version.

The largest of the three exhibits is William Christenberry's "Photographs 1961 - 2005". All of the photos were taken on Christenberry's annual trips to his native Alabama, and it's amazing how little has changed over time in his rural settings.

Most of the photos are of landscapes, but I especially liked the one of egg carton flowers on a headstone and his photographs of handmade painted signs. Be sure to check out the room with some of  Christenberry's paintings and found object pieces - they were some of my favorite parts of his show.

Definitely take a few minutes and walk to the small gallery on the far side of the auditorium to see "Remembering a House Divided: Robert King's Photographs of Civil War Re-enactors". King is a native Memphian and award winning photojournalist who has shot several battlefields (including fake ones).

I loved his photos of serious-faced teenage boys in Union army uniforms and women trying to walk across fields in impossible hoop skirts. The best photos, though, are the ones that clearly juxtapose the past and the present (like one of Union troops in uniform receiving orders while leaning against a shiny new pick-up).

I didn't get to see Winslow Homer's "From Poetry to Fiction", as it was still in the process of being installed. When it's up and running (which should be soon), it will feature 85 of Homer's woodcuts that ran as illustrations to news stories and magazine features.

If you're bringing kids to the Brooks (or, just like taking a few minutes to make things), there's a hands-on area where you can write with giant magnetic poetry and make Winslow Homer-style etchings on coated black paper.

Here's the one I made:

It's not quite a drawing. Instead, it's lyrics from the new Sufjan Stevens record (which goes really nicely with the exhibits).

Picturing America will be on display at the Brooks Museum of Art until early January 2011.

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Brooks Museum of Art