JACKSON, Mississippi — At noon, midweek, in the middle of a 90-degree midsummer, the streets of the downtown historic district of the Southern capital are nearly empty. They are like movie sets, perfectly detailed at the time, but used and abandoned in the past.
A mosaic of the words “Bon-Ton Café” is embedded in a sidewalk section that marks what was Jackson’s most exclusive restaurant a century ago.Built in the nearby King Edward Hotel as Edwards Hotel In 1923, it attracted travelers and later became a meeting place for blues musicians. Since then, it has been derelict until recent renovations, and traffic is sparse. Across the street, trains regularly hit the Georgian Revival-style Union Station, but most passengers never get off or on.
Decades ago, transcontinental trains and buses departing from the old Art Deco Greyhound Station a few blocks away were doing brisk business. And part of that business moved from the oppressive and dangerous Jim Crow South to places that wanted a safer and more prosperous life in cities like Chicago, Detroit, New York, Los Angeles, and other Black-Jacksonites. was born from carrying the to the north, east and west. .
Known as the Great Migration, this direct dispersal of about six million people is generally believed to have spanned from the late 19th century after Reconstruction to the 1970s after the Civil Rights Act. And that history gets an important update with a variety of exhibitions. “Movements in All Directions: The Legacy of the Great Migration” Here at the Mississippi Museum of Art.
A collaboration between the Mississippi Museum of Art and the Baltimore Museum of Art, the show features dozens of contemporary artists from across America. All immigration-themed pieces are new, co-commissioned by the museum in 2020, and completed during a pandemic that has nearly brought most discretionary travel to a halt. Some artists had access to detailed family histories that migrated from or within the South. For others, the geographic route wasn’t easy to follow—at least for one of her participants, the migration was personal, from north to south to Jackson itself. in progress.
Some artists take a documentary approach to their subject matter. Carrie Mae Weems, 69, is one of them. A video installation that looks like a stage, “Hare! Leave now! ‘ She recalls the harrowing story of her grandfather, Frank Weems, who was a sharecropper in Arkansas. In his 1936, he was viciously attacked by a white mob to organize a union. He walked north to Chicago and never returned home. Weems’ impassioned account of the family turmoil his exile caused, and her call for justice retroactively in his case, constitute the exhibition’s most overtly controversial moments.
Born in New Orleans in 1996, Akea Brionne, the show’s youngest contributor, makes more gentle use of archival material. Based in Detroit, she weaves photographic images of her ancestors who never left the South into iconic tapestries that sparkle with sewn rhinestones. And Leslie Hewitt, a native New Yorker now living in Harlem, reminiscent of the foundation of her home, framed her delicate glasswork inherited from her grandmother, who spent her life in Macon, Georgia. I have contributed 3 abstract floor works.
The idea that vast histories are embodied in material culture, specifically in the portable, is at the heart of Theaster Gates Jr.’s installation called “The Double Wide.” The multi-part piece commemorates his childhood summer trips from his home in Chicago to visit family in Mississippi. There, an uncle used to run a candy store out of a double-wide trailer that turned into a juke joint at night. It turned a pair of boxy structures into a personalized wheeled shrine to the south, stocked with canned and pickled foods, religious imagery, and jazzy videos of black gospel songs. The music group he founded, Monks.
Larry W. Cook, a Washington, D.C.-based conceptualist, captures the rural landscapes of Georgia and South Carolina and displays them alongside vintage portraits of his male ancestors several generations ago, creating a connection between Georgia and the state. Explore the roots of South Carolina. The history he explores creates patterns of chosen or forced absent paternity, and themes he hopes to sever in his own parenting practices.
Some artists extend the territorial reach of the Great Migration beyond customary borders. So is Zoe Charlton, who comes from the military. (she was born Eglin Air Force Base, Florida.) In a panoramic sculpture composed of planes, cutouts, and painted forms, she places her grandmother’s sky-blue Florida bungalow in the landscape, the Vietnamese jungle vegetation where many black soldiers have seen battle and the Mix in local palm trees.
Los Angeles-based Mark Bradford skips biographical references entirely in a wall of writing. His migration studies led him to his 1913 advertisement. “crisis,” A magazine advertisement produced by the NAACP said: Bradford’s mural-sized piece, made up of 60 versions of the advertisement on paper, repeats the utopian invitation like a chant, but darkens it.
While Bradford bases his views on the Great Migration on concrete sources, other artists treat it obliquely, with less success. Fantasy is a mode of 3-channel wraparound video by. Allison Janney Hamilton It has the spirit of black Floridians from the haunting homes of the past they once called home.video by Stephanie Jemison Featuring Alabama-based performer Rakia Black, it proposes the digital realm as a destination for liberation.and abstract sculptures in glass and steel Torquewase Dyson Avoid stories altogether. Its four hollow trapezoidal components resemble a giant set of audio amplifiers, but this part is muted.
In contrast, the two most powerful entries make convincing arguments for the continued dynamism of the Great Migration as a southwardly directed phenomenon. Monumental Crayon Drawing “Song for Travelers” Robert Pruittinspired by this Houston artist’s move to New York, but pays homage to the Texas city he’s leaving, which has long been an important destination for black immigrants.
And in a shimmering collage painting titled This Water Runs Deep, the artist jamea richmond edwards She depicts herself surrounded by her family – mother, sisters, husband and children – sailing together in a golden boat. There’s a story behind it here. Decades ago, after a series of devastating floods hit Mississippi, the Richmond-Edwards family had to leave the land they owned there for Detroit, where Jamea was born. They never got the land back, but the artist recently purchased a property near Jackson and plans to move here permanently.
She is sure to be a welcome addition to anyone interested in the history of this country and interested in black culture, a rich resource. Opened. The Mississippi Institute of Art houses a fascinating collection of works made in the South, some of which were organized by Ryan N. Dennis, chief curator and artistic director of the Museum’s Center for the Arts and Public. It is on display in the gallery adjacent to the Great Migration Show. Exchange, and Jessica Bell-Brown, chief of contemporary art at the Baltimore Museum of Art, her curator. Works by local Jackson artists enliven the public walls. And the Mississippi Freedom Trail runs downtown, marked by landmarks commemorating the events and people who shaped the era.
In fact, almost all the people I saw on the streets in the blazing sun in midsummer were tourists looking for just such a sign: leaving, others arriving. “A Movement in Every Direction” captures that unstoppable heartbeat. Followed by beats and feet.
Movement in All Directions: A Legacy of the Great Migration
Until September 11th Mississippi Museum of Art, 380 South Lamar Street, Jackson, Miss., (601) 960-1515; msmuseumart.orgIt will move to the Baltimore Museum of Art from October 30th through January. 29.
