The Helen Keller Art Show Comes to BPL
The Birmingham Public Library is privileged to host the 2025 Helen Keller Art Show of Alabama (HKAS), an annual traveling juried art show, this month. October is Blindness Awareness Month, and the exhibition is a unique opportunity to expand one’s appreciation of the remarkable achievements of people with vision loss.
HKAS features 32 works of art created by students with visual impairments, blindness, and/or deaf blindness from across Alabama. The show is on display in the First Floor Gallery at the Central Library through November 4.
Children who participate in HKAS use various media to create one-of-a-kind masterpieces, many of which have tactile components and can be experienced by other individuals with diminished vision. The pieces are produced in public, private, residential, and home schools.
According
to the Society for the Blind, Blindness Awareness
Month is “a time to shine a light on the accomplishments and capabilities of
people who are blind or have low vision. Rather than focusing on perceived
limitations, this month celebrates the resilience, independence and innovation
of people with vision loss.”
All the artwork in the Helen Keller Art Show of Alabama is for sale. Proceeds go to HKAS and allows for the framing and transportation of the subsequent year’s pieces to museums and exhibition spaces. Proceeds also help purchase art materials for schools that do not supply them.
HKAS
is a part of the educational outreach module of the School
of Optometry’s Vision Science Research Center at the University of Alabama at
Birmingham. The Art for Everyone exhibition series at the Birmingham Public
Library is made possible by a grant awarded to the Friends
Foundation of BPL by
the Alabama State Council on the Arts.
Written
by Margaret Splane, Library Assistant III
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