Since its opening, the Mississippi Museum of Art has implemented many projects that include The Palette, a café that first opened in 1980; the Open Gallery (1983) that featured avant-garde work; the Impressions Gallery for children (1987-1997); satellite museums, introduced in 1989 (now the Museum’s Affiliate Network of more than twenty-five locations around the state), the T. M. Hederman Memorial Endowment for Exhibitions (1986); and The Annie Laurie Swaim Hearin Memorial Exhibition Series (1992).
After President Jim Czarniecki’s resignation in 1983, Thad McLaurin and Marilyn Harris served as interim directors until Norman McCrummen III was appointed in 1984. His four-month tenure was followed by Alexander L. Nyerges, 1985-1992; Linda S. Sullivan, 1992-1995; Bill Loveless as interim director; Andrew Maass, 1996-2001; Jane Hiatt as interim director; and the Museum’s current director Betsy Bradley, who began her tenure in December 2001.
In addition to a dizzying schedule of changing exhibitions, the Museum offers year-round educational programs for both children and adults and hosts The Scholastic Art Awards Mississippi Regional Competition as well as the biennial Mississippi Invitational. Adults can enjoy monthly programs such as “Unburied Treasures,” which features art, music, and literature and “Jazz, Art & Friends,” which celebrates the merging of artistic disciplines. The Museum also offers entertaining and educational programs associated with current exhibitions and audio tours of select exhibitions. Innovative educational areas are the “Closer Look Gallery” and its smaller counterpart, the “Family Corners.” These spaces, located within the exhibitions themselves, offer visitors of all ages space to reflect on artwork and subjects found within the exhibitions.
With its many programs, diverse exhibitions, and rapidly expanding permanent collection, the Museum outgrew its first permanent home at the Mississippi Arts Center. Planning for the current facility began in 2002, and in June 2007 the plans came to fruition with the opening of the new Museum in the former Mississippi Arts Pavilion. The non-profit organization raised several million dollars from the community to fully fund renovations to the Arts Pavilion building and to support an endowment for its operation—a testament to the community’s dedication to the Mississippi Museum of Art.
A second phase of the original expansion plans called for the construction of The Art Garden at the Mississippi Museum of Art. In 2010, Museum officials mounted a new campaign to fund a 1.2 acre park that would serve as the Museum’s “front yard.” Opening in late September of 2011, The Art Garden unifies an arts district that includes several of the city’s foremost cultural organizations. Like the Museum itself, The Art Garden is designed to be an inviting space in which everyone can engage comfortably with art.
