Directed by the Birmingham Museum of Art and begun in 1985, the Alabama Decorative Arts Survey was a nine-year search throughout the state, in both private and public collections for ceramics, quilts, coverlets, furniture, paintings, photographs, metals, textiles, and grave markers that were made in nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Alabama. The project identified more than 10,000 objects, created survey sheets on each object and photographed the object. The survey sheets record the type of object, describe the object and its condition, list the maker and year of creation if known, and list the location of the object.
Highlighting objects from the Survey, the Birmingham Museum of Art created the exhibition "Made in Alabama: A State Legacy," which opened at BMA in 1994 and then traveled to the Huntsville Museum of Art, the Mobile Museum of Art, and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts. An accompanying catalog, also entitled Made in Alabama was published. In 2016, Old Alabama Town in Montgomery hosted the first "Alabama Decorative Arts Symposium," an event that brought together experts from the original Decorative Arts Survey.
In 1996, the Birmingham Museum of Art transferred all of the Survey files and photographs to the Birmingham Public Library Archives where those files are now preserved.
This database contains digitized images of the Decorative Arts Survey photographs and survey sheets.
