Folk Art & Memory with Melanie Antonelli

Death and the great beyond are elements of life with which humans have always grappled. In our current exhibition, "Bearing Witness," artists Walter Anderson and Jason Bouldin confront and process death through nature. Additional objects in the exhibition from the University of Mississippi Museum contextualize the myriad ways through which Southerners deal with human death and loss.

In this gallery talk, Melanie Antonelli, Director of Collections and Exhibitions at the University of Mississippi Museum, gives further insight into the unique objects loaned to the exhibition, like the other-worldly paintings of Theora Hamblett and Luster Willis, photographs of gravesites by Walker Evans and Al Clayton, and three-dimensional works by Sulton Rogers and Howard Finster.

Bearing Witness was developed in partnership with the University of Mississippi Museum with support from the O’Keefe Family Endowment for the Walter Anderson Museum of Art. This exhibition and its programs are financially assisted by the National Endowment for the Humanities through the Mississippi Humanities Council.