In a new exhibition titled A Movement in Every Direction, the migration of Black Americans from the rural south to the urban north has inspired a range of new artwork
The way we talk about the great migration is often oversimplified, limiting it to the movement of Black Americans from the rural south to the urban north through the early and mid 20th century. But there are many more stories of the great migration than just this one. The new joint exhibition between the Mississippi Museum of Art and the Baltimore Museum of Art, A Movement in Every Direction seeks to complicate that tidy narrative through freshly commissioned artwork that adds new stories to the great migration, and explores how it continues to this day.
Ryan Dennis, co-curator of the exhibit and Chief Curator of the Mississippi Museum of Art, told me that, “our vision for the show was to think more expansively about the great migration and to its deep connections to the south”. Revising predominating narratives of this massive exodus, Dennis believed that “it was really important to move away from the deep trauma connected to the great migration and to think more about how self-determined agency and possibility were a part of the story”.
