Come view Alain Desvergnes’ silent images of the mythical Yoknapatawpha County inspired by the writings of Willam Faulkner.
Sponsored by Friends of the Museum and Sherwin Williams
This exhibition traces the histories of coiled basketry in Africa and America and explores the evolution of an ancient art. Featuring baskets from the low country of South Carolina and Georgia as well as from diverse regions of Africa, the exhibition traces the story of coiled basketry from the domestication of rice in Africa, through the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the Carolina rice plantation, and then into the present day.
Visitors will experience diverse artifacts including baskets, basket-making tools and, historic rice cultivation artifacts. Grass Roots highlights the remarkable beauty of coiled basketry and shows how the market basket can be viewed simultaneously as a work of art, object of use, and container of memory. In this exhibition the humble but beautifully crafted coiled basket, made in Africa and the southern United States, becomes a prism in which audiences will learn about creativity and artistry characteristic of Africans in America from the 17th century to the present.
The exhibition has been made possible by NEH on the Road, a special initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art was organized by the Museum for African Art in New York City in collaboration with the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture in Charleston, SC. It was co-curated by Chief Curator Enid Schildkrout, Museum for African Art, and Curator and Historian Dale Rosengarten, College of Charleston. The exhibition is toured by Mid-America Arts Alliance through NEH on the Road. NEH on the Road offers eight different exhibitions for small to mid-sized communities across the country. Mid-America Arts Alliance was founded in 1972 and is the oldest regional nonprofit arts organization in the U.S. For more information, visit www.nehontheroad.org or www.maaa.org.
Admission to this special exhibition is $5 for the general public, $4 for senior adults, and $3 for students (ages 6-17). Admission is always free for UM students, UM Museum Members, and children under the age of five.
Opening Reception: Tuesday, October 23, 2012, 7:00 – 9:00 p.m.
Part of the Oxford Art Crawl
Due to the number of works in this exciting show, the gallery will be reinstalled with a second series of works running from November 6-December 8, 2012. Visit again to see new, breathtaking pieces by Rolland Golden!
In the words of Rolland Golden:
“I have always had an attachment to the Mississippi River. In the 1930’s and 40’s, I grew up in various parts of Mississippi and also visited my Grandmother, who lived on Sixth Street in New Orleans. We would sit on her front steps and listen to the ships’ horns, just five blocks away. Later, as an artist, my wife, children and I lived in the French Quarter, never more than 4 or 5 blocks from the river.
The Mississippi River has a timelessness about itself; yet, it had a beginning thousands of years ago. It is replete with history from end-to-end; yet, is stoic about its storied past. When I stand and look at it, a strange sense of melancholy comes over me – I don’t know why. The river is immune to such emotions; but, it exudes them.
It is beautiful, powerful, frightening and majestic – all at the same time. It has spawned many things over its ancient past from the Delta lands or either side, along with countless lakes when it decided to change its course. Plantation homes wanted to be near to utilize it for shipping cotton to Europe.
I have tried to capture the four aspects of this great river in my paintings: beauty, power, frightening and majestic.”
Annual membership party
From its inception, the University Museum has thrived due to the generosity of its many supporters. This exhibition celebrates recent donations to the Museum featuring work by acclaimed artists such as Mary T. Smith, Alyne Harris, Andrew Bucci, Marie Hull, Glennray Tutor, William Dunlap and more.
The UM Museum is incredibly grateful to the following donors for sharing their private collections with museum visitors and students for years to come:
Louis E. Dollarhide and Betty Z. Harrington
Elizabeth Dollarhide
John Z. Dollarhide
Louis E. Dollarhide, III
Martha C. Dollarhide
David K. Dollarhide
Donna H. Vinson
Vikki Hughes and Price Johnson
Dr. A.C. Brown
William Dunlap
Chancellor and Mrs. Dan Jones
Ray Meifert
Part of the Oxford Art Crawl
The Department of Archives and Special Collections at the University of Mississippi recently acquired the “Martha Alice Stewart: Time on Parchman Farm, 1930s” Collection. Ms. Stewart was Head Nurse at Parchman Farm from 1930 until 1939. The collection consists of nearly 200 black-and-white photographs documenting life inside the prison as well as some of her personal documents. The exhibition at the University Museum, “Time on Parchman Farm,” will showcase items from the collection. For more information, please contact Pamela Williamson, Curator of Visual Collections and Assistant Professor, at pmw@olemiss.edu or 662.915.5851.
July 3 – October 6, 2012
Opening Reception:
July 24, 7:00 – 9:00 p.m.
Part of the Oxford Art Crawl
The University of Mississippi Museum is pleased to present paintings by Estelle Faulkner, many of which have never been seen by an audience. Mrs. Estelle Faulkner was known for painting, reading, and playing the piano. She began painting while living in China in the 1920’s with her first husband who was a district judge and later had her art studio in Charlottesville, Virginia.
On her own work, Estelle Faulkner stated, “I used to give away most of my paintings. When someone offered to pay for them, I said to myself, ‘Now there’s an idea.’ ” Mrs. Faulkner usually did not enter her work in art shows.
“My inspiration for painting is a snatch of poetry or a sentence out of a book. I don’t paint from nature,” Mrs. Faulkner commented.
Lee Caplin writes, “We shared an artists studio in 1969-70. She had the patina of a real southern lady, spoke with precision and directness, a fine vocabulary, not colloquial in approach, but also had an artist’s passion for color and form. Her paintings were of medium size, organic shapes, deep, vibrant color, painted for herself, as an outlet for her vision-not a commercial orientation at all.”
This exhibit has been made possible by Lee Caplin and the Summers family.
Photography by Stephen Kirkpatrick
March 20 – June 9, 2012
Opening Reception: Tuesday, March 27, 2012
7:00 p.m.- 9:00 p.m.
Part of the Oxford Art Crawl
The UM Museum presents an exhibition of photography by acclaimed wildlife photographer, Stephen Kirkpatrick, based on his award-winning book, Sanctuary: Mississippi’s Coastal Plain. Released in November 2010, Sanctuary focuses on the rare and threatened natural treasures of the Mississippi Coastal Plain.
In dramatic photographs and brief yet well-researched text, the Sanctuary exhibition will reveal the fragile beauty and ecological importance of the Pascagoula watershed, the longleaf pine, and the Gulf of Mexico, and explain why it is so important to preserve these areas and the rare, threatened, and endangered species that call these places home.
An exhibition drawn from the book is timely, as Sanctuary is currently receiving national attention as the first place winner in the nonfiction category of the 2011 International Self-Published Book Awards sponsored by Writer’s Digest magazine.
In addition to the exhibition, Kirkpatrick Wildlife Photography will offer a number of related activities for Museum visitors of all ages.
Brown Bag Lecture and Gallery Tour with Stephen Kirkpatrick
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.
University of Mississippi Museum
Focus on Nature: Adult Photography Workshop
Saturday, April 14, 2012
10:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Cost: $70 (registration required)
Family Activity Day: Stephen Kirkpatrick Wildlife Photography
Saturday, April 21, 2012
10:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Cost: $15 (registration required)
April 17 – August 25, 2012
Opening Reception: Tuesday, April 17, 2012
7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Part of the Oxford Art Crawl
Curated by Mattie Codling, a junior at Ole Miss completing a professional internship at the UM Museum, this exhibit highlights the work of several well-known and not-so-well-known folk artists or “self-taught” artists from the Southeastern United States. The works included have primarily been made by using non-traditional materials and present their subjects in a primitive manner. A wide range of subjects is depicted, but they mostly focus on scenes that were familiar to the artist, such as religious scenes and images of the people and places around them. The works included in this show represent the very core of the artist’s lives; they are not only visually appealing, but they act as a documentation of Southern culture from the late 19th and 20th centuries.
June 26 – September 1, 2012
Opening Reception: Sunday, July 8, 2012
1:00 p.m.– 3:00 p.m.
“Why did I wake since waking I shall never sleep again?”
William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!
Inspired by William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!, John Shorb explores ideas of memory and loss in the American South using a mixed-media approach of printmaking and drawing to create works on paper, wood, and fabric. From the cotton plantations of the South to the industrial iron of the North, each piece gives us a glimpse into the novel’s themes of struggle, decadence, and ruin. Through this meditation on our disjointed past, Shorb assembles a new reality for today. The opening reception for this exhibition will be featured as part of the 39th Annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference.
John Shorb states, “Faulkner opened up a way for me to process the ways in which we remember a painfully proud history. It gave me access to a method of experiencing the complexities of the past that very few people address.” Using the printmaking technique of solvent transfer, Shorb combined his own images with appropriated materials such as the novel’s text and images from the nineteenth century. This technique allowed him to layer these various sources, conveying the residues of history and memory, as if these images have been burned or rubbed off onto etching paper, antique napkins, or pine panel. Some pieces include silkscreen techniques as well as drawing with charcoal, graphite, and ink. Shorb’s work addresses one of the central challenges of Faulkner’s novel: the vital yet futile need to piece together our collective past.
January 24 – August 18, 2012
Opening Reception: Thursday, February 16, 2012, 5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Since the second century BCE, the so-called “Silk Road” stretched for thousands of miles from eastern China to the Black Sea, thus linking the great civilizations of east Asia with those of southwest Asia and, thereby, to Europe. In later centuries the trade and cultural influences which flowed back and forth on land were transferred to the sea, as maritime shipping eventually came to dominate world commerce.
The superb examples of Chinese ceramics featured in this exhibition were prized at home and treasured abroad, where they were indeed rarities until the mid 18th century. Specific styles and innovations that arose as a result of cross-cultural exchanges are highlighted.
On the Silk Road and the High Seas: Chinese Ceramics, Culture and Commerce examines why Chinese ceramics were such prized commodities, both at home and abroad. Examples of proto-porcelain appeared in China about 3,000 years ago and hard-paste porcelain began to be made around 1,800 years ago. This precious product was sometimes called “white gold,” especially in the West. Foreign trade and changing domestic markets played a role in stimulating Chinese potters to continually reinvent their repertoire of shapes and decorative techniques. These exchanges also illuminate important episodes in cultural history.
Featuring more than seventy pieces of porcelain, stoneware, and carved jade from the permanent collection of the Norton Museum of Art, On the Silk Road and the High Seas highlights the innovations and distinctive styles that arose as a result of this bountiful cross-cultural exchange. The exhibition follows both chronologically and geographically the paths of trade along the Silk Road by way of this exquisite selection of decorative arts.
On the Silk Road and the High Seas: Chinese Ceramics, Culture, and Commerce was organized by the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida. It is being presented at the University of Mississippi Museum by the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College and the Croft Institute for International Studies at the University of Mississippi.
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