Exterior shot of the Birmingham Museum of Art, focusing on the original 1950s era Oscar Wells Memorial Building. Image credits: Wikimedia Commons
He purchased the house and adjacent land next to the African Village in 2001 and transformed it into exhibition space, according to the encyclopedia entry. After the death of his wife Hilda in September 2021, he created several works in her honor, and the encyclopedia entry features one piece named Hilda at the front of the village. In 2024, he was selected as the recipient of a $100,000 grant from the Ruth Foundation for the Arts. Joe Minter Is Here was organized in October 2024 by Navigate Affordable Housing Partners and Create Birmingham.
Because of the uncertain future of Minter’s art environment and personal collection, create Birmingham said the session was held. Because the village is an outdoor sculpture environment made from found materials, it remains vulnerable to weather and decay.
The Encyclopedia of Alabama says the artist works mainly in metal and wood, using discarded objects and items from flea markets and thrift stores, while the Whitney Museum’s description adds street signs, dolls, and bric-a-brac collected in his neighborhood, with metal as the main material. Moreover, it is said that the pieces are in museum collections such as the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Gallery of Art, and the High Museum of Art. The work’s themes include the African diaspora, slavery, racism, the civil rights movement, religion, and natural disasters. However, his production exceeded the boundaries of the yard. The pieces of Minter have been exhibited along with other Black artists, including History Refused to Die: Highlights from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation Gift at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His work kept evolving. Create Birmingham describes it as a community-based installation of never-before-exhibited work, housed in the historic Marc Steel warehouse building in his own neighborhood. The group also held a session called “Joe Minter’s African Village in America and the Paths for the Preservation of Art Environments. ” Jade Powers of the Birmingham Museum of Art moderated, and the speakers were Katherine Jentleson of the High Museum of Art, LaStarsha McGarity of Tuskegee University, and Laura Bickford of the Kohler Arts Center.
