by Holland Cotter via nytimes.com

“American Address” (2006) by Douglas Bourgeois in the show “Southern Accents.” Douglas Bourgeois, via Arthur Roger Gallery, New Orleans

When people think about contemporary American art, they tend to think only in coastal terms: New York and Los Angeles. Big mistake. There are alternative histories being written through the huge amounts of work going on elsewhere in this country. “Southern Accent: Seeking the American South in Contemporary Art,” at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in Durham, N.C., gives a rich and complex sense of this.

The show, which approaches the South as both a popular myth and a lived reality, includes outsiders to the region among its 60 artists. But the southerners born, raised and still in residence — Douglas Bourgeois, Diego Camposeco, Michael Galinsky, Birney Imes, Jessica Ingram, George Jenne, Tameka Norris, Tom Rankin, Jim Roche, Amy Sherald, Burk Uzzle, Stacy Lynn Waddell — are the names you’re likely to remember longest. Spirits of place, they’ll haunt you. The show is in Durham through Jan. 8, then heads to the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Ky. (nasher.duke.edu)