William Christenberry: The Early Years, 1954-1968

Places Christenberry’s work and his life in the South in significant new contextNationally recognized as an artist, photographer, teacher, and arts advocate, William Christenberry has lived and worked in Washington, DC, since 1968, when he became a professor of painting at the Corcoran Gallery School of Art. Although Christenberry is well known as a photographer and sculptor, relatively little has been known about his early paintings and his career in the South prior to 1968.Born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in 1936, Christenberry is closely identified with the culture and environment of his native South, specifically with the region around Hale County, Alabama, the same region memorialized by James Agee and Walker Evans in the classic Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. That book, first discovered by Christenberry when it was reissued in 1960, served as a major influence upon his early aesthetic development, including the creation of his “Tenant House” series of paintings, photographs, and studi