February 4, 2012–April 15, 2012

Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

The Mississippi Museum of Art hosts this annual Mississippi Regional Competition for students in grades 7-12 from throughout the state. All artworks winning at the regional level are exhibited prior to national competition, where Gold Key regional winners are eligible to compete.

On going

The Mississippi Story

Comprised of artwork from the Museum’s permanent collection, The Mississippi Story reveals the remarkable history of visual arts in the Magnolia State. The installation includes more than 200 objects and is divided thematically into four sections: Mississippi's Landscape, Mississippi's People, Life in Mississippi, and Exporting Mississippi’s Culture. The exhibition is guest curated by Patti Carr Black, author of Art in Mississippi, and is the Museum's most comprehensive showing of Mississippi art from its permanent collection. The exhibition features artwork by Walter Anderson, George Ohr, Sam Gilliam, William Dunlap, John McCrady, Richmond Barthé, Eudora Welty, William Hollingsworth, Marie Hull, and William Eggleston, among many others. Click the exhibition title for more information.

In Full Bloom: Garden Inspired Art from the Permanent Collection

ongoing
William B. and Isabel R. McCarty Foundation Gallery
This exhibition features eighteen stellar works of art from the Mississippi Museum of Art’s permanent collection, installed in celebration of the opening of The Art Garden at the Mississippi Museum of Art. The exhibition includes artwork in a variety of mediums by internationally-known artists like René Magritte and Pierre Bonnard, as well as work by beloved Mississippians G. Ruger Donoho, Mildred and Karl Wolfe, and Andrew Cary Young.
Free to the public.

Pre-Columbian Ceramics

The objects displayed in the cases of the Museum’s lobby originate from two continents and represent a time span of more than two thousand years. Pre-Columbian civilizations living across Peru, Mexico and Central America flourished prior to the arrival of Europeans. An array of archaeological cultures developed, several of which are represented in the collection exhibited here.

William Dunlap’s Panorama of the American Landscape

Ongoing (except during the Christmas holiday season when the Bethlehem Tree is featured)
Trustmark Grand Hall
This impressive mural was created by Mississippi native William Dunlap for the neoclassical rotunda of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 1984. The installation of the fourteen canvases at the Mississippi Museum of Art places the artwork, originally seen in the round, on one wall stretching eleven feet tall and fifty-five feet wide. Referencing historical cycloramas, this mural presents the hunt country of Virginia (the verdant Blue Ridge landscape near Dunlap’s Virginia home) at eye-level, while the harsh winter landscape of the Antietam battlefield fills the upper half of the space. The mural is full of class Dunlap iconography and is accompanied by a 28-minute video, “The Painter’s Landscape.” Free to the public.

William Christenberry’s Southern Wall

Public Corridor
Southern Wall, by Alabama-native William Christenberry, incorporates remnants of rural landscapes and buildings into a sculptural tableau. The 32-foot wall includes a window that reveals photographs of Mississippi landscapes, corrugated tin, and weathered siding from a 100-year-old barn accented with tobacco, soft drink, and fertilizer signs. This work of art was originally installed in the open-air entrance foyer of Jackson’s McCoy Federal Building in 1979. The piece is on loan to the Mississippi Museum of Art while the McCoy Federal Building undergoes renovations. Free to the public.

Digital Exhibitions

SOCIALmixedMEDIA Digital Survey Exhibition

In the spirit of the 2011 Mississippi Invitational (on view at the Museum through February 5, 2012) we called on our Facebook fans to help us curate a digital exhibition on our Facebook page. This inaugural SOCIALmixedMEDIA Invitational was composed entirely of work submitted by those fans. We thank all of you who submitted, viewed, and engaged with the over one hundred pieces of art in that digital exhibition. View the complete album of all of those works here.

We are proud to present this survey exhibition of some of the most popular and well received works in the SOCIALmixedMEDIA Invitational. These selected artworks are those that received the most positive feedback on Facebook. There are thirteen artists in the 2011 Mississippi Invitational whose work illustrates the bounty of contemporary Mississippi art. Likewise, these twelve artworks in various mediums from the digital SOCIALmixedMEDIA Invitational embody the sprit of the Mississippi Invitational and showcase the breadth of talent throughout the state and beyond.