For Miriam’s 90th birthday, she visited her beloved hometown of Birmingham, AL. While there, she met with friends and family to enjoy their company, great food, and a birthday cake (or two!).
She also visited the Birmingham Museum of Art, which she help fundraise for and support over the decades. She enjoyed seeing some of her old favorite paintings that she would study and copy (you could do that then) as an emerging artist in the 1950s. One abstract piece (pictured) by Bob Thompson, she immediately recognized as a style that she practiced while in NYC and the Art Student’s league in 1959. And funny enough, Bob’s painting was done in 1959 in NYC. Maybe they ran into each other? She did run into Salvador Dali at a dinner party in NYC in 1959. You can see her in the image below looking at one of his sculptures in the Museum collection.
She also enjoyed a visit to the Birmingham Botanical Gardens which were the setting of many of her paintings through the decades. One small area of the Gardens features a statue of “Echo” and a frog in the pond which she did several works from over the years.
Overall, it was a wonderful visit and she looks forward to a return in February of 2026 to see the Monet-Matisse exhibit at the Birmingham Museum of Art.
