Center partners with Walter Anderson Museum of Art on digital humanities project
Zaire Love named Curatorial Fellow in the Humanities at Walter Anderson Museum of Art
The Walter Anderson Museum of Art (WAMA) announces Southern Art/Wider World, a digital humanities project made possible by a CARES Act grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), with additional support from the Mississippi Humanities Council. Southern Art/Wider World empowers dialogue about the historical and cultural themes present in WAMA’s collection and the Southern land, through livestreamed public programs, a mobile app, and a continued education course. Livestreamed programs will be presented between August and December 2020.
Project partners include the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, which will help identify participating scholars and advise WAMA on the development of the digital continuing education course.
“The Center for the Study of Southern Culture is delighted to partner with the Walter Anderson Museum of Art,” said Kathryn McKee, Center Director and McMullan Associate Professor of Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi. “The Museum’s innovative plans to make their holdings virtually accessible, supplemented with the interdisciplinary insights of scholars at our Center, promise to secure an even wider reach for their collection that will extend beyond the short term.”
The Mississippi Humanities Council will further advise WAMA on digital strategies. Its existing support of WAMA’s humanities programming augments that of the NEH.
“This grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities will help support one of our state’s leading cultural institutions and enable them to respond to the current crisis in innovative ways,” said Stuart Rockoff, Director of the Mississippi Humanities Council. “The Mississippi Humanities Council is excited to be an advisory partner in the project.”
Humanities at the Walter Anderson Museum of Art.
Southern Art/Wider World also supports a new position, the Curatorial Fellow in the Humanities, who will help manage media production, research, and program design related to the project. The position will be held by Zaire Love, a multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker, whose work is an ode to being Black and Southern in America. Love earned a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre at Spelman College, a Master of Education from Houston Baptist University, and, in May of 2020, a Master of Fine Arts in Documentary Expression from the University of Mississippi.
“This is an exciting time to bring my love of Southern storytelling through many mediums to the Walter Anderson Museum of Art,” said Zaire Love, Curatorial Fellow in the Humanities. “Mississippi has always been a land of great innovation, art, and culture, and it’s time to let the world in on it through diverse lenses.”
“Through his coastal lens, Walter Inglis Anderson sought to make sense of the worlds around him, engaging themes from transcendentalism and environmental history to foodways and Depression-era labor,” said Julian Rankin, Director of the Walter Anderson Museum of Art. “We are committed to increasing access to the treasured collection in service to new contemporary voices and understandings that speak to the interconnectedness of Southern and American ways of life.”