Reverend Albert Lee Wagner: Miracle At Midnight

AVAM's newest one-man show, "Reverend Albert Lee Wagner: Miracle At Midnight," is in celebration of one of America's most prominent visionary artists. Curated from 50+ Wagner masterpieces recently gifted to the museum by Gene and Linda Kangas, this show will also include two of Reverend Wagner's largest works, donated to AVAM's permanent collection ten years ago by Pat Handal.

Museum founder and director, Rebecca Alban Hoffberger, is the curator of "Miracle at Midnight" - a show title commemorating the transformative moment when house paint spilled on a floor board forever changed an actively sinning Wagner as he prepared for his own 50th birthday. Transfixed by the scene of pooling paint, Wagner experienced a spiritual epiphany, forever ending his womanizing and kicking off an intense period of religious service and art making that would endure until his peaceful death at the age of 82.

Hoffberger says, "Much like his fellow visionary artist Reverend Howard Finster, who began his prolific art making only after receiving a message from a face perceived in a paint smudge on his finger, or the famed French Postman Cheval, who tripped on a stone and instantly understood he could hand-build a rock palace that stands today, 100+ years later, Wagner's 'Miracle at Midnight' gives stunning visual testimony to the truth of Maya Angelou's wise observation, 'If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform a million realities.'"

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website