“Art Across Mississippi: Twelve Exhibitions, Twelve Communities” kicks off this weekend in Mccomb with the first of the exhibits opening until June 16.
The exhibitions are part of the Mississippi Museum of Arts celebration of the state’s 200th birthday.
“Our initiatives are essentially two fold. The first one is ‘Art Across Mississippi: Twelve Exhibitions, Twelve Communities.’ What that is is the museum taking work from our collection, curating 12 exhibitions for communities all over the state,” said Julian Rankin, Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson. ”
The shows will feature pieces that come from the museum in Jackson. They will put on display quilts, abstract paintings, social art, and Southern Gothic art.
Rankin said there hasn’t always been an art world in Mississippi, this exhibition allows for Mississippi to show each other, and the rest of the world how we are viewed and how we view ourselves.
“Land of Plenty Pain and Promise, it’s a complicated 200 years we have been in but it’s a really important and fruitful one that we are looking forward to sharing that with all the people in Mississippi,” said Rankin.
The schedule for the exhibits is listed below:
- “A Social Art: Mississippi Art in the Early 20th Century,”
- May 6-June 16 in the McComb Public Library.
- “Narratives of the Land,”
- June 16-Aug. 19 in the Charleston Arts Center in Charleston.
- “Home and Away: On the Road with Marie Hull,”
- June 8-July 27 at the Fielding L. Wright Arts Center at Delta State University in Cleveland.
- “Eudora Welty’s Women,”
- Aug. 1-Sept. 9 at Mississippi Cultural Crossroads in Port Gibson.
- “Narratives of the Land,”
- Sept. 1-Oct. 14 at McComas Hall Art Gallery at Mississippi State University in Starkville.
- “More than Meets the Eye: The Art of the Mississippi Blues,”
- Sept. 8-Oct. 23 at the E. E. Bass Cultural Arts Center in Greenville.
- “A Social Art: Mississippi Art in the Early 20th Century,”
- Sept. 15-Oct. 27 at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College in Gautier.
- “Voices in the Threads: Quilts from the Mississippi Museum of Art,”
- January and February at the Union County Heritage Museum in New Albany.
- “Formal Explorations: Abstract Art from the Permanent Collection,”
- December until March at the Gumtree Museum of Art in Tupelo.
- “Southern Gothic: Spiritual Sites and Evocative Spaces in Mississippi Art,”
- Feb. 1-March 15 at Historic Jefferson College in Natchez.
- “A Social Art: Mississippi Art in the Early 20th Century,”
- Feb. 9-March 23 at the Meridian Museum of Art.
- “Fine/Folk: Modes of Representation in African-American Art,”
- March 12-May 19, 2018, Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi.
- “Picturing Mississippi, 1817-2017: Land of Plenty, Pain and Promise,”
- December 9, 2017 – July 8, 2018.
The state’s final birthday celebration will be held on December 10th in the capitol city.
