The Black Arts Movement Comes Home: A Major Exhibition Opens at MMA This Summer

A groundbreaking exhibition is coming to the Mississippi Museum of Art this summer, and it's one that hits especially close to home. Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955–1985 opens July 25 and runs through November 8, 2026 — bringing more than 150 works and over 100 artists to downtown Jackson in a show that connects the national story of the Black Arts Movement to Mississippi's own pivotal role in it.

What the Exhibition Explores

Organized by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC — where it debuted — and previously shown at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the exhibition traces how photographers and visual artists used their craft to build a distinctly Black visual culture and identity during one of the most turbulent and transformative periods in American history.

The works span photography, video, collage, painting, installation, and other lens-based media, with some pieces rarely or never before seen by the public. Artists include Romare Bearden, Dawoud Bey, Kwame Brathwaite, Roy DeCarava, Gordon Parks, Adrian Piper, Lorna Simpson, Carrie Mae Weems, and more than 100 others whose work shaped the era.

Why Jackson Is the Right Place for This Show

This isn't just a traveling exhibition making a stop in Mississippi — MMA's presentation has been intentionally deepened to reflect what happened here.

In partnership with Jackson State University's Margaret Walker Center, which operates the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) Learning Center, MMA is highlighting COFO's central role in the civil rights movement. COFO was the organizational home for Freedom Riders in 1964 and one of the only initiatives to successfully unite major civil rights organizations — the SNCC, CORE, SCLC, NAACP, and local groups — under one coalition.

Supplementary wall labels in the exhibition's activism section and expanded resources on MMA's Bloomberg Connects app will bring that Mississippi context to life for visitors.

A Rare Look at the Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival

MMA's presentation also includes rarely seen photographs from Jackson State University taken in 1973, during the inaugural Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival. Organized by poet Margaret Walker, the festival brought together leading Black women writers of the Black Arts Movement — Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, Sonia Sanchez, and Nikki Giovanni — for readings, conversations, and cultural exchange.

"Our goal of partnering with COFO and the Margaret Walker Center for this powerful presentation is to amplify the singular role that Mississippi played in galvanizing both the Civil Rights and Black Arts Movements," said MMA Associate Curator of Exhibitions Kaegan Sparks.

Mississippi Photographers and Freedom Summer Documentation

The exhibition also features work by Mississippi photographers Doris Derby and Roy Lewis, alongside documentation by Bob Fletcher, Doug Harris, Danny Lyon, and Tamio Wakayama that vividly portrays the aftermath of Freedom Summer and the formation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in 1964 — both civil rights milestones organized by COFO.

About the Exhibition Catalogue

A fully illustrated catalogue, published by the National Gallery of Art in association with Yale University Press, accompanies the exhibition. Edited by Philip Brookman and Deborah Willis, with a preface by Angela Y. Davis, the publication features essays exploring women and the movement, community, activism, Black photojournalism, and the global connections of the Pan-African movement. The catalogue is available through MMA.

Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955–1985 is on view at the Mississippi Museum of Art, July 25 – November 8, 2026.