Picturing Mississippi

The centerpiece of the Museum’s bicentennial initiatives, Picturing Mississippi commemorates and celebrates the 200th anniversary of statehood for Mississippi, admitted to the Union on December 10, 1817, as the 20th state.

The exhibition follows the evolving story of Mississippi—first shown by foreign-born artists as a place of immense beauty and prosperity. Later, they depicted it as a land laid waste by civil war, farmed by sharecroppers, held in check by segregation, and seared by the struggle for civil rights. They have ultimately shown it to be a place that has found an artistic voice of its own. Art made about Mississippi’s people, places, and events offers a powerful lens through which to understand the state’s history; this visual narrative complements the artifacts and stories in the new Museum of Mississippi History. The visual narrative depicted by Picturing Mississippi complements the artifacts and stories found in the new Museum of Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. The opening of Picturing Mississippi coincides with the opening of the two Mississippi Museums, as the result of a partnership with the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

With approximately 175 works by more than 100 different artists, this exhibition is unprecedented in the history of Mississippi. The works are on loan from private collectors and prestigious national institutions—including the National Portrait Gallery, the National Gallery of Art, and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (also a Smithsonian Institution); the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass.); the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Minn.); the High Museum of Art (Atlanta, Ga.); the Amon Carter Museum of American Art (Fort Worth, Texas); the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville, Ark.); and the Museum of Fine Arts (Houston, Texas)—and drawn from the Museum’s own collection.