Exhibition to Open at the Mississippi Museum of Art on April 9, 2022, Before Traveling to the Baltimore Museum of Art
On April 9, the Mississippi Museum of Art (MMA) will open A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration, which explores the profound impact of the Great Migration on the social and cultural life of the United States from historical and personal perspectives. Co-organized with the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA), the exhibition features newly commissioned works across media by 12 acclaimed Black artists, including Akea Brionne, Mark Bradford, Zoë Charlton, Larry W. Cook, Torkwase Dyson, Theaster Gates Jr, Allison Janae Hamilton, Leslie Hewitt, Steffani Jemison, Robert Pruitt, Jamea Richmond-Edwards, and Carrie Mae Weems. Through the artists’ distinct and dynamic installations, A Movement in Every Direction reveals anew the spectrum of contexts that shaped the Great Migration and explores the ways in which it continues to reverberate today in both intimate and communal experiences. The exhibition will be open at the MMA through September 11, 2022, and will then travel to the BMA, where it will be on view from October 30, 2022, through January 29, 2023. A Movement in Every Direction will be accompanied by a two-volume publication that includes commissioned essays by Kiese Laymon, Jessica Lynne, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, and Dr. Willie J. Wright.
The Great Migration saw more than six million African Americans leave the South for destinations across the United States at the start of the 20th century and well into the 1970s. This incredible movement of people transformed nearly every aspect of Black life, in both rural towns and urban metropolises, and spurred an already flourishing Black culture. A Movement in Every Direction provides a platform for the featured artists to explore, reflect on, and capture their own relationships to this singular historic happening, both personally and artistically. Brought together by co-curators Ryan N. Dennis (she/her), MMA Chief Curator and Artistic Director of the Museum’s Center for Art and Public Exchange, and Jessica Bell Brown (she/her), BMA Associate Curator of Contemporary Art, the works offer an insightful rumination on the complexity of the Great Migration as a narrative that is still unfolding. The exhibition showcases an incredible richness of artistic vision and endeavor, with installations ranging widely in conceptual and technical approach and embracing painting, sculpture, drawing, video, sound, and immersive installation. MMA and BMA are also creating digital assets tied to the exhibition for their websites for virtual engagements.
“We asked this group of talented artists to join us on this journey over a year ago, during a pandemic, to investigate their connections to the South. The process has been illuminating, and we are so thankful for their excitement and commitment to this project during such a trying time. As each project has developed over the last year, informed by research, explorations, and dialogue, it has become clear that our show will primarily underscore reflections on family. It will posit migration as both a historical and political consequence, but also as a choice for reclaiming one’s agency. The works examine individual and familial stories of perseverance, self-determination, and self-reliance through a variety of expressions,” said Dennis and Brown.
Many of the works in the exhibition engage with new and ongoing research by the artists, examining this history through the lens of contemporary life and establishing incisive parallels across time. Torkwase Dyson’s Way Over There Inside Me (2022), which includes an installation of modular sculptures as well as an online archive, examines the relationships between plantation economies, Black spatial histories, and our deepening environmental crisis. The connections between migration, economies, and landscape are also explored in Allison Janae Hamilton’s three-channel film installation, A House Called Florida (2022). It offers a haunting, mythic exploration of the longstanding, symbiotic connections between Black life and the southern environment, and a speculation on the intertwined fates of life and land in the aftermath of climate degradation. The same themes occur in Jamea Richmond-Edwards’ multimedia installation, reflecting on the how natural disasters have catalyzed Black migration. In other instances, the artists’ research emphasizes the making of culture, such as Steffani Jemison’s video work, which features Alabama-based actress Lakia Black and others expressing a range of real and imagined identities through spoken word and music.
The development, strength, and resilience of community also emerged in the research and creation of individual works, and as an important thread within the exhibition. Mark Bradford’s 500 (2022), an installation of 60 individually painted and oxidized panels, is inspired by and takes its name from a Black settlement in New Mexico that the artist discovered during research for the exhibition, and which was billed as a safe and self-reliant community for Black people. In A Song for Travelers (2022), Robert Pruitt examines his hometown of Houston, particularly the Third and Fourth Wards, which served as a locus for protection and resources for new migrants through a large-scale drawing that reflects archival and contemporary representations of the evolution of his community. Zoë Charlton’s large-scale installation, Permanent Change of Station (2022), features a monumental wall drawing and life-size pop-up sculpture that blur boundaries between real and imagined and between the domestic and foreign. Charlton explores how, for some families like hers, military service became pivotal for Black social advancement and at the same time, fueled global imperialist interventions in Vietnam and the Philippines.
Personal and familial experiences are central to the entire exhibition, and for several artists this engagement led to the creation of particularly intimate works. In her immersive video installation, titled LEAVE! LEAVE NOW!! (2022), Carrie Mae Weems explores the journey of her grandfather Frank Weems, a prominent tenant farmer and union activist who was presumed dead after being attacked by a white mob in 1936, but who survived and made his way to Chicago. A series of digital prints reflecting on Frank Weems’ northward journey entitled The North Star (2022) will accompany the installation. Akea Brionne’s An Ode to You(‘all) (2021) explores ancestral resilience and strength within Black maternal family structures. The installation focuses on the lives of the artist’s great-grandmother and three great-aunts through tapestries that contain familial significance and signals the labor of prior generations who worked to improve the lives and opportunities of their descendants. In a series of large-scale photographs and archival family photographs, Larry W. Cook explores intergenerational narratives about fatherhood and forgiveness as he traces his paternal lineage across Georgia, South Carolina, and Washington, DC.
The interplay between the personal and communal continues with The Double Wide (2022) by Theaster Gates Jr, a large-scale sculptural installation that resembles a double-wide trailer owned by his uncle that had functioned as a candy store by day and a juke joint by night. The installation features a soundtrack as well as material culture that speaks to Gates’ childhood, family, and friends. Leslie Hewitt’s Untitled (Slow Drag, Barely Moving, Imperceptible) (2022) positions a group of abstract sculptures informed by destabilization and migration in relation to time and space.
“Through this incredible spectrum of works, we hope viewers will experience A Movement in Every Direction as a meditation on ancestry, place, and possibility,” added Dennis and Brown.
Publications
The exhibition will be accompanied by a two-volume publication. The first volume will encompass a critical reader highlighting pivotal scholarly work around aspects of the Great Migration, from the shaping of American cities to its impact on Black spirituality, music, art, food, and culture. The second volume will offer a capsule presentation of exhibition content, including curatorial essays, artist entries, and newly commissioned essays by leading scholars Kiese Laymon, Jessica Lynne, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, and Dr. Willie J. Wright.
Sponsors
A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration is co-organized by MMA and BMA with support provided by the Ford Foundation, Teiger Foundation, Henry Luce Foundation, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Its presentation in Jackson, Mississippi, is sponsored by the Robert M. Hearin Support Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Lucy and John Shackelford Fund of the Community Foundation for Mississippi, The Selby and Richard McRae Foundation, Trustmark National Bank, Mississippi Arts Commission, Mississippi Humanities Council, Visit Mississippi, Visit Jackson, Butler Snow, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Mississippi Symphony Orchestra, The Westin Jackson, the Ramey Agency, Downtown Jackson Partners, Ross & Yerger, Hope Credit Union, H. F. McCarty, Jr. Family Foundation, Claudia and Robert Hauberg, Brian T. Fenelon, Christina and Brian Johnson, Mary and Sam Miller, and Kathryn L. Wiener.
About the Baltimore Museum of Art
Founded in 1914, the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) inspires people of all ages and backgrounds through exhibitions, programs, and collections that tell an expansive story of art—challenging long-held narratives and embracing new voices. Our outstanding collection of more than 95,000 objects spans many eras and cultures and includes the world’s largest public holding of works by Henri Matisse; one of the nation’s finest collections of prints, drawings, and photographs; and a rapidly growing number of works by contemporary artists of diverse backgrounds. The museum is also distinguished by a neoclassical building designed by American architect John Russell Pope and two beautifully landscaped gardens featuring an array of modern and contemporary sculpture. The BMA is located three miles north of the Inner Harbor, adjacent to the main campus of Johns Hopkins University, and has a community branch at Lexington Market. General admission is free so that everyone can enjoy the power of art. For more information, visit artbma.org
About the Mississippi Museum of Art
Established in 1911, the Mississippi Museum of Art (MMA) is dedicated to connecting Mississippi to the world and the power of art to the power of community. The Museum’s permanent collection includes paintings, photography, multimedia works, and sculpture by Mississippi, American, and international artists. The largest art museum in the state, the Mississippi Museum of Art offers a vibrant roster of exhibitions, public programs, artistic and community partnerships, educational initiatives, and opportunities for exchange year-round. Programming is developed inclusively with community involvement to ensure that a diversity of voices and perspectives are represented. Located at 380 South Lamar Street in downtown Jackson, the Museum is committed to honesty, equity, and inclusion. The Mississippi Museum of Art and its programs are sponsored in part by the City of Jackson and Visit Jackson. Support is also provided in part by funding from the Mississippi Arts Commission, a state agency, and in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. For more information, visit msmuseumart.org.
MMA media contacts:
Jana Brady, Mississippi Museum of Art, jbrady@msmuseumart.org, 601-651-3822
Libby Mark or Heather Meltzer, Bow Bridge Communications, info@bow-bridge.com, 917-968-5567
BMA media contacts:
Anne Brown, The Baltimore Museum of Art, abrown@artbma.org, 410-274-9907
Alina E. Sumajin, PAVE Communications & Consulting, alina@paveconsult.com, 646-369-2050
Image Captions
Top row, left to right:
Zoë Charlton, Photo: E. Brady Robinson Photography
Allison Janea Hamilton, Photo: Frankie Alduino
Leslie Hewitt, Photo: Richard Renaldi
Torkwase Dyson, Photo: Gabe Souza
Akea Brionne, Photo: Akea Brionne
Mark Bradford, Photo: Sim Canetty-Clarke, © Mark Bradford, Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth
Bottom row, left to right:
Steffani Jemison, Photo: Nottingham Contemporary 2017
Larry W. Cook, Photo: Nakeya Brown
Jamea Richmond-Edwards, Photo: Jamea Richmond-Edwards
Carrie Mae Weems, Photo: Audoin Desforges, 2020
Theaster Gates Jr, Photo: Sara Pooley
Robert Pruitt, Photo: Autumn Knight, 2020