In summer 2025, the Mississippi Museum of Art will present the next Mississippi Invitational, a biennial survey of contemporary art made across the state. Exhibition participants will be selected through an open application process overseen by guest curator TK Smith, Curator of the Arts of Africa and the African Diaspora at the Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University.
The 2025 Mississippi Invitational will be accompanied by an illustrated publication. Exhibition participants will be eligible to apply for the Jane Crater Hiatt Artist Fellowship—a grant of up to $20,000 to support a single artist’s creative development. The winner of this fellowship will be announced at the exhibition opening in June 2025.
Only artists participating in the Mississippi Invitational exhibition are eligible to apply for the Jane Crater Hiatt Artist Fellowship in the year that their work is selected. More information on the fellowship selection process will be made available to exhibition participants by early 2025.
Mississippi Invitational exhibitions and related publications are sponsored by the Community Foundation for Mississippi/Jane Crater Hiatt Fund.
Applications are now closed. Winners will be announced by March 2026.
For more information, please contact mmacuratorial@msmuseumart.org
About Guest Curator TK Smith
TK Smith is an Atlanta-based curator, writer, and cultural historian. He is Curator of the Arts of Africa and the African Diaspora at the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University. His recent curatorial projects include Hand to Mouth at Stove Works (2024), Kelly Taylor Mitchell & Sergio Suárez: Material Memory at Swan Coach House Gallery (2024), Roland Ayers: Calligraphy of Dreams at the Woodmere Museum of Art (2021). From 2022-2024, he served as Assistant Curator: Art of the African Diaspora at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. Smith’s writing has been published Art in America, The Brooklyn Rail, and ART PAPERS, where he is a contributing editor. In 2022, he was a recipient of an Andy Warhol Writers Grant for short form writing. As a public scholar, Smith has lectured for several institutions, including the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Saint Louis University, and Cornell University. Currently, Smith is a doctoral candidate in the History of American Civilization program at the University of Delaware.
About the Jane Crater Hiatt Artist Fellowship
The Jane Crater Hiatt Artist Fellowship was created in 2005 by Jane Crater Hiatt and her late husband Wood (1930-2010) to nurture and invigorate the arts within the state. The fellowship provides support to an individual artist in the development and creation of art over a two-year period. The funds may be used to purchase supplies and equipment, conduct research, travel, and/or study with an individual artist or in a studio, workshop, or residency setting. Following the conclusion of the grant period, the artist is required to donate one original work of art, chosen from at least five works created during the grant period, to the Mississippi Museum of Art’s permanent collection.
