On March 30, 2022, Mississippi Museum of Art executive director Betsy Bradley and Chief Curator Ryan Dennis discussed the exhibition A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration as part of the History Is Lunch Series.
The Great Migration saw more than six million Black Americans leave the South between 1915 and 1970 for cities across the United States. This year the Mississippi Department of Archives and History and the Mississippi Museum of Art are partnering on an initiative examining the Great Migration and its impact on the state and the nation. A Movement in Every Direction explores the effects of the Great Migration on the social and cultural life of the county from historical and personal perspectives.
Co-curated with the Baltimore Museum of Art, the exhibition features newly commissioned works across a variety of media by twelve acclaimed Black artists.
“This group of intergenerational artists with ancestral ties to the South was asked to research and reflect on their personal histories and migration narratives through the lens of their contemporary practices,” said Bradley. “Their works explore themes of perseverance, self-determination, and self-reliance, along with the continuing impact of the Great Migration.”
“A Movement in Every Direction will attend to and complicate histories of racial violence, trauma, and socio-economic exigency, while also examining the agency seized by those who fled as well as those who stayed behind,” said Dennis. “Artists whose practices deal with personal and communal histories, familial ties, the Black experience, and the ramifications of land ownership and environmental shifts, among so much more, were invited to consider how we can expand our understanding of this essential moment in American history.”
Betsy Bradley was appointed director of the Mississippi Museum of Art in 2001, after serving as executive director of the Mississippi Arts Commission. She earned her BA in English from Millsaps University and her MA in English from Vanderbilt University. Bradley has overseen significant growth of the art museum, including the move to a completely renovated facility and the creation of The Art Garden, the first new public green space in downtown Jackson since the 1970s. Bradley was elected to membership of the Association of Art Museum Directors in 2012 and has served on the boards of Americans for the Arts, the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, and the Southern Arts Federation.
Ryan N. Dennis is chief curator and artistic director of the Center for Art & Public Exchange (CAPE) at the Mississippi Museum of Art. Her recent projects include Leonardo Drew: City in the Grass (2020), Betye Saar: Call and Response (2021), Piercing the Inner Wall: The Art of Dusti Bongé (2021), and Collective Care for Black Mothers and Caretakers, a CAPE residency project by Shani Peters organized with the community. Dennis has published widely and been a visiting lecturer and critic at a number of art schools and institutions. She was co-curator of the 2021 Texas Biennial and recently served as guest art editor for Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts.
History Is Lunch is sponsored by the John and Lucy Shackelford Charitable Fund of the Community Foundation for Mississippi. The weekly lecture series of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History explores different aspects of the state's past. The hour-long programs are held in the Craig H. Neilsen Auditorium of the Museum of Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum building at 222 North Street in Jackson.
