E.O. Wilson Day in Mobile; A special program, introduced by Mobile writer and filmmaker, Ben Raines, will be presented at the Mobile Museum of Art on Friday, October 7, 2022, 5 – 7:30 pm; the program of speakers and filmed selections will be followed by a reception and exhibition opening in the museum gallery.
Duke University professor and photographer Alex Harris approached famed naturalist and scientist, Edward O. Wilson, after reading Wilson’s evocation of his Southern childhood in The Naturalist and Anthill. Following their meeting, Harris and Wilson collaborated on a book about Wilson’s native world of Mobile, Alabama. The photographer and the naturalist joined forces to capture the rhythms of this storied Alabama Gulf region through Wilson’s lyrical words and Harris’s photographic images capturing the mood of Mobile’s radical transformation city as it adapted to the twenty-first century. Their book became a universal story, one that tells us where we all come from and why we are here, and was titled “Why We Are Here: Mobile and the Spirit of a Southern City,” followed by an exhibition of the same title in 2012, presented at the Mobile Museum of Art.
Twenty years after that first exhibition, a selection of Harris’s photographs and Wilson’s evocative quotations are presented once again in a tribute exhibition and program celebrating the work and life of E.O. Wilson (1929-2021).
This program is sponsored by The Carolyn W. Saunders Foundation, with additional support from the following partnering organizations:
Alabama Coastal Foundation, Alabama School of Math and Science, The Audubon Society, City of Mobile, Dauphin Island Sea Lab, Downtown Alliance, E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation, GulfQuest National Maritime Museum of the Gulf of Mexico, The Longleaf Alliance, Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce, Mobile Botanical Gardens, Mobile Bay National Estuary Program, Mobile Baykeeper, Mobile County, Mobile Museum of Art, The Nature Conservancy of Alabama, Scenic98Coastal, Seamen’s Foundation, The Sierra Club, South Alabama Land Trust, University of South Alabama Biology Department
