A rarely seen chapter of Mobile art history is coming into public view this month as the History Museum of Mobile prepares to open its largest internally produced exhibit in the institution’s 50-year history. The show centers on more than 100 artifacts and images created and collected by Roderick D. MacKenzie, a Mobile-born painter and photographer who traveled through South Asia at the turn of the twentieth century and later gained international recognition for his work.
MacKenzie grew up in Mobile in the 1870s before spending more than a decade, from 1893 to 1906, traveling across India. During that time he documented everything from tiger hunts and mountain expeditions along the country’s northern border to swims in the Ganges River, capturing both the wealth of Indian royalty and the hardships of laborers he encountered along the way.
Museum staff say the idea for the exhibit took shape roughly five years ago, when curators cataloging the museum’s holdings recognized the significance of hundreds of glass-plate photography slides MacKenzie had brought back from his travels. The artist used a small glass-plate camera to produce four-inch slides, then created finished images through a contact-printing process that exposed photographic paper directly to the slide. Many of those images have never before been displayed publicly, having remained in storage since MacKenzie returned to Mobile just before the outbreak of World War I.
According to museum records, the slides eventually made their way into the History Museum’s collection through the family of a fellow Mobile artist, who is believed to have preserved them after MacKenzie’s death in 1941. Nearly all of the artifacts featured in the exhibit are already part of the museum’s permanent holdings.
The centerpiece of the show is a full-scale reproduction of MacKenzie’s monumental painting depicting a ceremonial procession marking the crowning of a British monarch as Emperor of India in the early 1900s — a work originally commissioned by the era’s British colonial administration and now housed overseas. Museum staff worked with local printers to enlarge and reproduce the image on canvas specifically for the Mobile display, marking what curators describe as the first time area residents will be able to see the piece.
Beyond the India material, the exhibit also includes MacKenzie works closer to home, including pastel studies of the construction of the Bankhead Tunnel and what is believed to be his final, unfinished painting of the Alabama Drydock and Shipbuilding Company on Pinto Island, along with a series depicting Alabama’s steel industry.
Museum leaders say they plan to send the exhibit on a statewide tour after its run in Mobile closes next fall, and a companion book about MacKenzie’s life and travels is available for purchase at the museum gift shop. A public lecture on MacKenzie’s time in India is also planned later in the month. The History Museum of Mobile, located downtown on South Royal Street, offers free admission and is open Tuesday through Sunday.