Coleman's Cafe (I)
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
mixed media, painted wood, and clay soil
Dimensions
overall (without base): 46.67 × 65.41 × 92.71 cm (18 3/8 × 25 3/4 × 36 1/2 in.) base: 6.99 × 92.71 × 125.73 cm (2 3/4 × 36 1/2 × 49 1/2 in.)
Classification
Sculpture
Department
CMC
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Corcoran Collection (Gift of Mr. Robert Lehrman)
Accession Number
2014.136.293
Art Historical Context
William Christenberry's *Coleman's Cafe (I (1982) is a captivating mixed-media sculpture that invites visitors to step into the heart of the American South. Crafted from painted wood and clay soil, this work measures nearly three feet tall and evokes the weathered charm of a rural roadside cafe. Housed in the National Gallery of Art as part of the Corcor Collection, it exemplifies Christenberry's lifelong fascination with vernacular architecture—the everyday buildings of his native Alabama. Christenberry, a key figure in Southern regionalism, transformed humble structures like stores, churche...
About the Artist
William Christenberry
William Christenberry (1936–2016) was an American artist whose career-long obsession with a small region of rural Alabama transformed the documentation of a place into one of the most sustained and poetic bodies of work in contemporary American art. Born in Hale County, Alabama — the same landscape made famous by James Agee and Walker Evans in their 1941 book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men — Christe...