Joe Minter

Joe Minter (born March 28, 1943) is an African American sculptor based in Birmingham, Alabama. His African Village in America, on the southwest edge of Birmingham, is an ever-evolving art environment populated by sculptures he makes from scrap metal and found materials; its theme is recognition of African American history from the first arrivals of captured Africans to the present. Individual pieces from Minter's thirty-year project have been in major exhibitions in the United States and are in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others.





== Early life ==

Minter was born in Birmingham, Alabama, the eighth child into a family of ten. His father was a mechanic during World War I, but after the war, was unable to find a job in his field. Minter's father instead worked for thirty years as caretaker of a white cemetery. Joe Minter attended local Birmingham schools, was drafted in 1965 and discharged in 1967. After the military, Minter took a series of low-paying jobs, from dishwasher at a drive-in, to messenger and orderly hospital work. Minter also worked in metals, constructed school furniture, did work on cars, and with crews building roads. As a result of his fabrication work, Minter got asbestos dust in his eyes in the 1960s and ‘70s.