A Movement in Every Direction : Legacies of The Great Migration-art exhibit
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The exhibit features work by 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. The works explore “profound impact of the Great Migration on the social and cultural life of the United States from historical and personal perspectives,” museum officials explained.
The museum hosted an April 8 weekend opening that featured discussions from most of the artists. The weekend guests included Ford Foundation president and author Darren Walker, who spoke to attendees about the lasting legacies of the Great Migration, and ABC anchor and Mississippi native Robin Roberts.
The exhibit will be open at the museum in downtown Jackson until Sept. 11, 2022.
Here are some photos from the exhibit’s opening weekend.
The Great Migration is such a big deal. I think it gets overlooked in American history.
Black people were literally refugees in their own country. To this day, the destination cities, most of which weren't ready or receptive to the migration, practiced a soft form of discrimination and racism resulting in higher than normal incarceration and police brutality against Blacks.
I view The Great Migrants no differently than any other displaced person around the world.
Black people were literally refugees in their own country. To this day, the destination cities, most of which weren't ready or receptive to the migration, practiced a soft form of discrimination and racism resulting in higher than normal incarceration and police brutality against Blacks.
I view The Great Migrants no differently than any other displaced person around the world.
get these nets
Veteran
Cued to @19:43, the start of the panel discussion
There is no single story of the Great Migration, as is evident in the incredibly unique work produced by the artists in the exhibition. The very starting point for A Movement in Every Direction is one that is deeply personal and that requires a different approach, kind of collaboration, and level of care in bringing it to fruition. Join us for a conversation with our curators and several artists on materiality, storytelling, and the making of an exhibition.
Welcome remarks by: Betsy Bradley, Director, Mississippi Museum of Art Chris Bedford, Director, Baltimore Museum of Art
Introductory remarks by: Ryan N. Dennis, Chief Curator and Artistic Director of CAPE, Mississippi Museum of Art Jessica Bell Brown, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art, Baltimore Museum of Art
Featuring: Dr. Ebony Lumumba, first lady of Jackson, chair and associate professor of English, Jackson State University Robert Pruitt, artist Zoë Charlton, artist
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At a moment when the future of this country seems precarious and uncertain, A Movement in Every Direction demonstrates that Black Americans have been among this nation’s most stalwart heroes.
by Seph Rodney June 21, 2022
Jamea Richmond-Edwards, “This Water Runs Deep” (2022) (photo Seph Rodney/Hyperallergic; all other images: photos by Mitro Hood, courtesy the Mississippi Museum of Art and Baltimore Museum of Art)
JACKSON, MS — It’s not until about a week after attending the opening ceremonies for the exhibition A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration that I begin to realize just how apt the title is, and how judicious and fitting its co-production arrangement. The exhibition is produced by a partnership between the Mississippi Museum of Art (MMA), which hosts its first iteration, and the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA), to which it is slated to travel in October of this year.
The title refers to the historical development between 1910 and 1970 in which approximately six million Black Americans moved from the American South to other parts of the country, most famously to urban centers such as Detroit, Baltimore, and New York City.
As the show’s two curators — Ryan Dennis, Chief Curator for the MMA and the Artistic Director for the museum’s Center for Art and Public Exchange (CAPE), and Jessica Bell Brown, curator and head of the Contemporary Art department at the BMA — point out in their introduction to the Great Migration Critical Reader (which they compiled to accompany the exhibition), this means that in 1915, about 90% of Black Americans lived in the South while by the 1970s only 50% did. This is a momentous shift, but these numbers indicate a counter-narrative as well: Many Black people stayed. The movement really was in all directions, including down, deeper into the land and soil that some Black folks knew intimately and, in some ways, still trusted. There was also movement within the South. Allison Janae Hamilton points this out in a roundtable conversation, partially reproduced in the reader, among the exhibition’s artists, the curators, and four writers and researchers who also have connections to the South. Here, Hamilton talks about micro-migrations that occur because of forcible displacement, racial terror, and environmental climate concerns.
Allison Janae Hamilton, “A House Called Florida” (2022), three-channel film installation (color, sound), 34:46 min. (courtesy the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York and Aspen)
In both its construction and subject matter this show is profoundly timely. At a moment when the future of this nation seems precarious and uncertain, A Movement in Every Direction demonstrates that Black Americans have been among this nation’s most stalwart heroes, despite being perceived through the lens of white supremacy as existing outside of its imagined borders. As Dennis and Brown write in their introduction to the accompanying reader: “Wherever Black Americans went or wherever they chose to stay behind where there are heart breaking and seemingly relentless instances of hardship, racial terror, lynching, and Jim Crow apartheid, there are also stories of abundance, land ownership, self-possession, and deep ancestral knowing.”
Yes. Someone needed to say this out loud and without qualification. The stories of Black folks have always been the stories of the United States of America, and they are among the most imaginative and irresistible narratives because they embrace the whole spectrum of human ambition, suffering, degradation, achievement, and invention.
In their joint foreword to the reader, MMA Director Betsy Bradley and then BMA Director Chris Bedford write: “The creation of new genres of music, literature, and visual art can be tied directly to legacies of migration. What is less understood, however, is the link between contemporary Black visual artists and their family migration stories.” Many of these personal stories are aired in the Great Migration Critical Reader roundtable dialogue. Here, you can hear how the artists conceive of the Great Migration and their place in it, how all its social, economic, political, legal, personal, aesthetic, and metaphorical valences work through them and their families. This seems to be the essential aim of the exhibition.
There is no single story of the Great Migration, as is evident in the incredibly unique work produced by the artists in the exhibition. The very starting point for A Movement in Every Direction is one that is deeply personal and that requires a different approach, kind of collaboration, and level of care in bringing it to fruition. Join us for a conversation with our curators and several artists on materiality, storytelling, and the making of an exhibition.
Welcome remarks by: Betsy Bradley, Director, Mississippi Museum of Art Chris Bedford, Director, Baltimore Museum of Art
Introductory remarks by: Ryan N. Dennis, Chief Curator and Artistic Director of CAPE, Mississippi Museum of Art Jessica Bell Brown, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art, Baltimore Museum of Art
Featuring: Dr. Ebony Lumumba, first lady of Jackson, chair and associate professor of English, Jackson State University Robert Pruitt, artist Zoë Charlton, artist
============================================================
A Show About the Great Migration Strikes a Timely Chord
At a moment when the future of this country seems precarious and uncertain, A Movement in Every Direction demonstrates that Black Americans have been among this nation’s most stalwart heroes.
JACKSON, MS — It’s not until about a week after attending the opening ceremonies for the exhibition A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration that I begin to realize just how apt the title is, and how judicious and fitting its co-production arrangement. The exhibition is produced by a partnership between the Mississippi Museum of Art (MMA), which hosts its first iteration, and the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA), to which it is slated to travel in October of this year.
The title refers to the historical development between 1910 and 1970 in which approximately six million Black Americans moved from the American South to other parts of the country, most famously to urban centers such as Detroit, Baltimore, and New York City.
As the show’s two curators — Ryan Dennis, Chief Curator for the MMA and the Artistic Director for the museum’s Center for Art and Public Exchange (CAPE), and Jessica Bell Brown, curator and head of the Contemporary Art department at the BMA — point out in their introduction to the Great Migration Critical Reader (which they compiled to accompany the exhibition), this means that in 1915, about 90% of Black Americans lived in the South while by the 1970s only 50% did. This is a momentous shift, but these numbers indicate a counter-narrative as well: Many Black people stayed. The movement really was in all directions, including down, deeper into the land and soil that some Black folks knew intimately and, in some ways, still trusted. There was also movement within the South. Allison Janae Hamilton points this out in a roundtable conversation, partially reproduced in the reader, among the exhibition’s artists, the curators, and four writers and researchers who also have connections to the South. Here, Hamilton talks about micro-migrations that occur because of forcible displacement, racial terror, and environmental climate concerns.
In both its construction and subject matter this show is profoundly timely. At a moment when the future of this nation seems precarious and uncertain, A Movement in Every Direction demonstrates that Black Americans have been among this nation’s most stalwart heroes, despite being perceived through the lens of white supremacy as existing outside of its imagined borders. As Dennis and Brown write in their introduction to the accompanying reader: “Wherever Black Americans went or wherever they chose to stay behind where there are heart breaking and seemingly relentless instances of hardship, racial terror, lynching, and Jim Crow apartheid, there are also stories of abundance, land ownership, self-possession, and deep ancestral knowing.”
Yes. Someone needed to say this out loud and without qualification. The stories of Black folks have always been the stories of the United States of America, and they are among the most imaginative and irresistible narratives because they embrace the whole spectrum of human ambition, suffering, degradation, achievement, and invention.
In their joint foreword to the reader, MMA Director Betsy Bradley and then BMA Director Chris Bedford write: “The creation of new genres of music, literature, and visual art can be tied directly to legacies of migration. What is less understood, however, is the link between contemporary Black visual artists and their family migration stories.” Many of these personal stories are aired in the Great Migration Critical Reader roundtable dialogue. Here, you can hear how the artists conceive of the Great Migration and their place in it, how all its social, economic, political, legal, personal, aesthetic, and metaphorical valences work through them and their families. This seems to be the essential aim of the exhibition.
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Why aren't you the mod of this sub forum yet? @Houston911
What’s the issue?
No issue just noticed this forum is un moderated and @Get These Nets has been putting in work... more than anyone here really.
get these nets
Veteran
Thank you Sir. This is my favorite section and the one that I naturally gravitate toward. Gotten a lot from it and try to contribute to it.
Not interested in modding though.
