About the HPL Galleries
Established in 1993, HPL Galleries is a visual arts exhibition and education program that seeks to connect our library community with artists and arts educators, activate public engagement with the arts and to cultivate the visual arts in Alabama and beyond. We achieve this by curating the exhibitions program around artists who have a rigorous art practice and are connected to the greater arts community, through teaching or other means, and with our arts education programming, such as our Artist Talk Series and our exhibition collaborations with surrounding university art departments.
HPL Galleries produces over twenty exhibitions each year and is comprised of four rotating exhibition spaces, the Friends and Plaza Galleries, the George P. Farmer Gallery and the City Hall Gallery. Additionally, the Southern Voices Gallery is home to our permanent collection which is comprised of works from past Southern Voices Fellowship recipients. Other works on view and in our collection are Frank Fleming’s The Reader, Chip Cooper’s Alabama Troubadours and The Work of Joe Minter: A Photo Essay.
Friends and Plaza Galleries
These two exhibition spaces serve as the primary galleries for the exhibitions program. Utilized jointly, they house our monthly visiting artist exhibitions. Each exhibition shows for one month in the Friends Gallery that is adjacent to the Library Theatre and then rotates up to the Plaza Gallery that is located in the center of the Library.
Southern Voices Gallery
This gallery is home to our permanent collection that was built from the Library's Southern Voices Festival. The collection contains the work of past Southern Voices Fellowship recipients and is also an additional exhibition space that is utilized for the annual Southern Voices exhibition.
George P. Farmer Gallery
The Farmer gallery is primarily our submissions gallery, where local artists can show their work, but it is also utilized to collaborate with arts educators and students. A large portion of our visual arts exhibitions program also involves partnering with outside arts and education organizations and we have worked in the past with educators at the University of Alabama, Birmingham; Montevallo, Paperworkers Local; The Alabama School of Fine Arts and The University of Alabama.
City Hall Gallery
The gallery at City Hall serves as a bridge to the heart of the Hoover arts community and this exhibition space is primarily utilized to exhibit the work of Hoover and Jefferson County residents, and artists that have deep roots in the Alabama arts community. Recent artists that have exhibited at the City Hall Gallery are Bob Shelton, Professor Emeritus of Birmingham Southern College; Lowell Vann, Professor Emeritus of Samford University; Quilters of Gees Bend; and Dee Falls and Christi Bunn of the Hoover Arts Alliance.