For Artists Richard Dial, Celestia Morgan, and Roscoe Hall, All Roads Lead to Alabama

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By Shauna Stuart | For the Birmingham Times

Roll Call: Two Hundred Years of Black American Art is like a family reunion. The Birmingham Museum of Art’s newest exhibition features 99 works by Black artists from the early nineteenth century to the present, curated entirely from the museum’s permanent collection.

Over the decades, the BMA has displayed the works in multiple galleries and exhibitions. But for Roll Call, Jade Powers — the museum’s Hugh Kaul Curator of Contemporary Art and lead curator of the exhibition — brought many of the works together again to take viewers on a journey to illustrate how the BMA built its collection.

On Sept. 25, the Birmingham Museum of Art christened Roll Call with an opening reception, followed by a panel featuring three artists in the exhibition: sculptor and metalworker Richard Dial, photographer Celestia Morgan, and painter Roscoe Hall.

At the celebration, Curators and gallery owners chatted jovially with artists whose work they’d helped exhibit in past years. Members of Birmingham’s food and beverage community celebrated Hall, a renowned chef whose work was also on view at Bayonet for Birmingham’s Southbound Food Festival.

After the reception, attendees gathered in the museum’s Steiner Auditorium where Powers and the artists discussed creativity and the influence of the South.

Richard Dial always knew Alabama would influence his art, especially the Birmingham- Bessemer area. His father, the renowned artist Thornton Dial, was passionate about his home state. Born in 1928 to sharecroppers in Emelle, Alabama. Thornton Dial later moved to live with his great-grandmother and aunt in Bessemer. He grew up collecting objects and making small figurines from wood and fishing wire. In the 1950s, Dial began working at Bessemer’s Pullman Standard Plant, where he built a career in heavy metalworking. His sons, including Richard, would later start working at the plant.

The Dial family was well-known in the Pipe Shop neighborhood of Bessemer. Thornton Dial often gave his figurines to neighbors, and his metal sculptures were displayed in the yard surrounding his studio. In Bessemer, the community knew and admired the work of “Mr. Dial.” Richard Dial remembers this practice with pride. During the panel, he reflected on his father’s legacy with a smile and a tongue-in-cheek joke.

“My dad kind of drove that stake in the ground. He was kind of like Donald Trump. He wanted to put his name on everything,” Dial said with a chuckle. “Everywhere you go, people kind of say, ‘Oh yeah, I saw your dad’s work.’ So, long-term, I didn’t have any choice.”

Richard Dial developed his craft working alongside his family at their metal furniture studio, Dial Metal Patterns. His artistic practice focuses on transforming furniture into art. On view in “Roll Call,” his wrought iron and steel sculpture “Chuck Berry” pays homage to the legendary guitarist and rock-and-roll pioneer.

For Celestia Morgan, her birthplace and family lineage in Alabama directly influence her work.

“Birmingham is who I am,” said Morgan. “The place is not just where I live, but I look at it as an artist ecosystem where everything around me helps with my creativity. I look at it also as part of my identity. Who we are and how who you are impacts your work. Even if it’s figurative or abstract, your identity is embedded into your art.”

Morgan’s curiosity about Birmingham’s history — from its industrialization to the civil rights movement–also molds and fuels her artistic practice.

“Although I didn’t grow up during that era, it still impacts the generation in which I grew up,” said Morgan.

Morgan is named after her grandmother, who died a year before she was born.

“All of my work kind of explores and is centered around her,” said Morgan.

That connection inspired her to delve into her family’s archives. She found an old suitcase containing family records, including birth and death certificates, bills, and insurance policies. After reading the addresses on the paperwork, she went to Birmingham to track down and photograph some of the locations. During her search, she came across abandoned and dilapidated buildings. The photographs of those structures– from blighted houses to hollowed-out shopping centers — helped lay the foundation for the photography series REDLINE and Disparities — two bodies of work that explore the impacts of housing discrimination and systemic inequality in Birmingham.

Hall, who grew up in Chicago, says he had to move back to Alabama to fully understand that he was an artist.

“I had to breathe a little bit and then tackle some of the fears that come with the Southeast,” said Hall.

“The South has always been kind of a stressful place (for me), kind of scary,” he said. “Church took a little bit longer. People take time to do stuff, and I had to get used to that. And by getting used to that, it’s helped me focus on the kind of narrative I want to live as far as being an artist now in the Southeast.”

Hall comes from Southern culinary royalty — his grandfather is acclaimed pitmaster John “Big Daddy” Bishop, the founder of the iconic Dreamland Bar-B-Que in Tuscaloosa. His family is also steeped in activism — his father was a Black Panther. For Hall, one aspect of his artistic practice is reckoning with the past, present, and future of the South through a lens of food and social justice.

One of his goals: use his art to tell a story of migration, time, place, and narrative, using materials from the region to express his curiosity about the Southeast.

“I put my all into making sure that people understand Alabama through my practice in general, and at least start asking the right questions,” said Hall.

Roll Call: Two Hundred Years of Black American Art is showing at the Birmingham Museum of Art through January 17, 2027.