Our Collection

Southern Stories

One of the distinguishing features of the culture of the region is the time-honored tradition of storytelling. The Southern narrative is riddled with complexities and encompasses an extraordinary range of archetypal images and subjects, such as the Southern belle, the African American laborer, and picturesque, sprawling scenes of the rural South.

Great Southern storytelling is seen in a variety of images in the museum’s collection, including Kentuckian Thomas Satterwhite Noble’s The Price of Blood, which reflects both the artist’s sound academic training and his abhorrence of slavery, and Russell Smith’s Baptism in Virginia, which illustrates the importance of religion to a community.