May 2017 – May 2018
Art Across Mississippi: Twelve Exhibitions, Twelve Communities
(JACKSON, MISS.) To celebrate Mississippi’s bicentennial year, the Mississippi Museum of Art (the Museum) is curating exhibitions from its collection for twelve host venues across the state. These exhibitions feature artworks by regionally acclaimed artists - past and present - including Walter Anderson, William Dunlap, William Ferris, Ke Francis, Marie Hull, Hystercine Rankin, and Sulton Rogers, among many others. Art Across Mississippi: Twelve Exhibitions, Twelve Communities provides residents throughout the state with an opportunity to enjoy high-quality exhibitions from the Museum’s permanent collection in their own communities, to reflect on the rich heritage of Mississippi’s visual arts, and to contemplate the meaning of the bicentennial moment.
Art Across Mississippi exhibitions are companions to Picturing Mississippi, 1817-2017: Land of Plenty, Pain, and Promise, the latest in The Annie Laurie Swaim Hearin Memorial Exhibition Series. This landmark exhibition includes more than 135 artworks interpreting the state’s rich artistic legacy over two centuries, brought home to the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson. Picturing Mississippi will be on view Dec. 9, 2017- July 8, 2018 at the Mississippi Museum of Art.
The schedule for Art Across Mississippi is as follows:
A Social Art: Mississippi Art in the Early 20th Century, May 6 - June 16, 2017
McComb Public Library - hosted by the Pike County Arts Council, McComb, MS
Narratives of the Land, June 16 - August 19, 2017
Charleston Arts Center - hosted by CARE (Charleston Arts and Revitalization Effort), Charleston, MS
Home and Away: On the Road with Marie Hull, June 8 - July 27, 2017
Fielding L. Wright Arts Center at Delta State University, Cleveland, MS
Eudora Welty’s Women, August 1 - September 9, 2017
Mississippi Cultural Crossroads, Port Gibson, MS
Narratives of the Land, September 1 - October 14, 2017
McComas Hall Art Gallery at Mississippi State University, Starkville, MS
More than Meets the Eye: The Art of the Mississippi Blues, September 8 – October 23, 2017
E. E. Bass Cultural Arts Center - hosted by the Greenville Arts Council, Greenville, MS
“The Museum's collection of art is made more valuable every time Mississippians have encounters with it,” said Betsy Bradley, Director of the Mississippi Museum of Art. “The celebration of our state's bicentennial is the perfect opportunity for the Museum to share its collection with people across the state. We are honored that our partners are hosting these exhibitions in their communities. We are excited to share how, during the past two hundred years, artists have helped us to see our hometowns and each other with new eyes and increased sensitivity to the beauty around us.”
Bicentennial exhibitions created by the Mississippi Museum of Art are supported by the Robert M. Hearin Support Foundation and the state of Mississippi, through the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Additional support for Art Across Mississippi is provided by Ross & Yerger, Trustmark, Entergy, Mississippi Media, and Mississippi Power.
More about Picturing Mississippi
Picturing Mississippi, 1817-2017: Land of Plenty, Pain, and Promise, on view at the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson from December 9, 2017 through July 8, 2018, commemorates and celebrates the 200th anniversary of statehood for Mississippi. Its aesthetic goal is to assemble original artworks in various media of the highest quality to illuminate the perception and depiction of Mississippi over more than two centuries. With at least 175 works by more than 100 different artists, the exhibition is unprecedented in the history of the state.
The exhibition will proceed chronologically and thematically, giving visitors the opportunity to perceive the evolving depiction of Mississippi – first by foreign-born artists as a place of immense beauty and prosperity, and later as a land laid waste by civil war, farmed by sharecroppers, held in check by segregation, and changed forever by the struggle for civil rights. Eventually, new voices rose to express the extraordinary artistic creativity of Mississippians of all races.
A significant component of the bicentennial exhibition will also feature art made in response to the events, victims, and heroes of the civil rights movement in the South, dovetailing with exhibitions on display at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. The opening of Picturing Mississippi coincides with the opening of the 2 Mississippi Museums as the result of a partnership with the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.
For more information on Art Across Mississippi and Picturing Mississippi, visit www.msmuseumart.org.