Mississippi Museum of Art’s Legacies of the Great Migration Exhibit: Why You Need to See It

Welcome back y’all! As I’m sure you all know by now, I’m a quite active and busy girl. I can be home one weekend and gone another, but I always make my trips count, no matter the length.

My recent trip to Jackson, Mississippi has probably been my most favorite so far, since I got to see what is probably the best exhibit I’ve ever been to.

The Mississippi Museum of Art invited select people to check out their newest exhibit, ‘A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration’, which opened April 8. If you’re not sure what the Great Migration is, don’t worry, I’ll school ya soon.

Me and other creators, bloggers and influencers enjoyed a weekend of learning, healing and celebrating, which I can’t wait to talk about below.

So, without further ado, I introduce my review and thoughts on the museum’s exhibition!

[Note: This post is sponsored by the Mississippi Museum of Art.]

So, how did this all start?

Earlier this year, I was approached about tentatively attending the opening weekend for the exhibit. I was pretty excited, since my family does have roots in Mississippi. In fact, they were born and grew up about an hour from Jackson!

I ridden through there for years throughout my childhood, but never really had time to truly explore it. Obviously, I had to say yes.

Opening weekend for the exhibit was April 8 through April 10. I attended a media preview, featuring a short program including words from some of the artists of the works inside of the exhibit, as well as other major figures in the art, Jackson and Mississippi community.

Once that was done, we took a guided tour by two curators of both the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Mississippi Museum of Art. If Baltimore confuses you, that’s because the exhibit is co-organized by the Baltimore Museum of Art and where it will be headed after it closes in Jackson.

Now the guided tour is where the magic happens.

A deeper look at the Mississippi Museum of Art exhibits

Of course, this isn’t the first time I’ve been in a museum. I feel like we all have dozen of museum stories from grade school, where it was just a really fun field trip looking at pretty paintings.

This was much more serious and profound.

Like I mentioned earlier, this exhibit is all about various interpretations of the Great Migration, a time period where millions of Black people were leaving the South to settle in other places across the United States. While some of the artists are still based in the South, many others currently reside in those places that were popular during the Great Migration.

There were so many amazing artworks, I don’t even know where to start. Probably Robert Pruitt’s piece, ‘A Song for Travelers’, 2022. Pruitt, born in Houston, Texas, but currently based out of New York, made a piece featuring the city’s Third, Fourth and Fifth Wards. Texas Southern and other Houston based media is featured extensively throughout the piece.

It’s incredibly huge…at least three times my height!

Another amazing piece was Jamea Richmond-Edwards’ work, ‘This Water Runs Deep’, 2022. Rivaling Pruitt’s creation in size, Edwards used various forms of media and collage on a canvas to depict how natural disasters affected Black migration.

It was also accompanied by sound, which I had never experienced before.

Finally, one of the last pieces I got to take in was a piece called ‘500’ by Mark Bradford. Bradford took an advertisement found while doing research for his creation and made a piece on 60 painted and oxidized panels.

Bradford painted each panel individually, which featured the advertisement which boasted a safe and self-reliant community for Black people in New Mexico.

So what’s next?

There’s way more than three pieces at the exhibit, which is in Jackson until September 11, but I can’t reveal everything to y’all! There’s pieces you can climb into, pieces you can listen to and much more.

As a Black person, I think it’s very important to experience pieces like this, because they can teach you so much more than you could ever learn in a classroom. It’s also super important to me to support and experience the arts, which often gets the short end of the stick in regards to funding.

Finally, it’s important to learn about other Black people’s experiences! We all have different backgrounds, stories and ways we got to where we are currently. You never know what innocently greeting somebody can do.

If you’re eager to check out the exhibit, hosted by the Mississippi Museum of Art, head over here! You don’t want to miss it, trust me.

What’s your favorite museum in the world? Let me know in the comments below!

Until next time,