Picturing Mississippi, 1817-2017: Land of Plenty, Pain, and Promise

This anthology of essays is published in conjunction with the bicentennial of Mississippi statehood and accompanies the exhibition Picturing Mississippi, 1817-2017: Land of Plenty, Pain, and Promise organized by the Mississippi Museum of Art. Compiled and edited by Jochen Wierich, a scholar of American studies and American art and chief curator at the Museum, these essays examine artistic views of Mississippi from statehood to the present.

Essays by multiple authors offer new perspectives on the complex relationship between Mississippi and the visual arts it has inspired. While previous publications have focused on Mississippi art as a regional movement, this book, lavishly illustrated with more than one hundred illustrations, discusses Mississippi as a cultural landscape defined by cross-cultural exchange and conflict. Broadly organized chronologically from when Mississippi was a territory shaped by Native Americans, African enslaved people, and European settlers to the twenty-first century, these essays probe the many ways in which artists have tried to give meaning to Mississippi as a real and imagined place. Through the wider lens of social and cultural context, Picturing Mississippi, 1817-2017 follows the deeper issues that connect Mississippi with the arts produced both inside and outside the state boundaries. The collection provides distinct views of the main themes that run through the history of Mississippi art, such as racial justice, identity, memory, and environment.