Black Arts Spaces: There and Then, Here and Now
JANS – Marking the close of Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight, the Mississippi Museum of Art organizers are finalizing plans for a two-day program that explores community building in the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s–70s and its legacies today.
DAY 1: FRI., JAN. 23
10:30 AM: Check-in (Museum Foyer)
11 AM: Guided tour of Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight with MMA Associate Curator of Exhibitions Kaegan Sparks (The Donna and James Barksdale Galleries for Changing Exhibitions)
Boxed lunches will be provided for pre-registered attendees.
Noon: Welcome and introduction by Kaegan Sparks (Trustmark Grand Hall)
12:30–2 PM: Conversation with artists Odili Donald Odita and Sur Rodney (Sur) on their personal experiences working with Joe Overstreet and Kenkeleba House, moderated by Kaegan Sparks (Trustmark Grand Hall)
2–2:30 PM: Break
2:30–4:30 PM: Panel discussion on the history of Kenkeleba House with presentations by art historians Josie Roland Hodson, Abbe Schriber, and Alexandra M. Thomas, moderated by Maya Harakawa (Trustmark Grand Hall)
4:30 PM: Reception (Trustmark Grand Hall)
DAY 2: SAT., JAN. 24
10 AM: Check-in with coffee and pastries (Museum Foyer)
11 AM–12:30 PM: Panel discussion on arts organizing in Jackson with presentations by cultural producers Gus Daniels-Washington (JXNOLOGY), Alexis Noble (Vibe Studio JXN), and Christina McField (The WoodGrain Studio), moderated by Wendy Shenefelt (Alternate ROOTS)
Registration includes access to the final public close-looking tour of Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight at 2 PM. (The Donna and James Barksdale Galleries for Changing Exhibitions)
Free and open to the public.
For more information, visit https://www.msmuseumart.org/event/black-art-spaces/
About the participants
Gus Daniels-Washington is an Artivism Educator and Social Justice Facilitator with over ten years of expertise in movement building, youth development, artivism (arts focused activism), community engagement, people assemblies, and education advocacy. Gus is the Founder and Executive Director of JXNOLOGY, a youth-led artivism and wellness collective that seeks to answer the question, “How does art impact change?”
Maya Harakawa is Assistant Professor in the department of Art History at the University of Toronto. A specialist in the art of the African Diaspora in the United States, she studies histories of Black radicalism and their impact on Art History.
Josie Roland Hodson is a writer and PhD candidate in Black Studies and History of Art at Yale University. Her work considers evolutions in experimental Black aesthetics – new avenues in performance art, public installation, and collective practice – in New York City during periods of austerity.
Christina McField is a community advocate, contemporary artist, and cultural producer dedicated to empowering creatives through art and education. As founder of The WoodGrain Studio, LLC, she cultivates spaces where art and culture can thrive, fostering growth and collaboration within the creative community.
Alexis Noble is a multidisciplinary creative, art translator, curator, and cultural architect based in Jackson, Mississippi. She is the founder and executive director of Vibe Studio JXN, an independent art gallery and creative incubator redefining what contemporary Southern art looks and feels like.
Odili Donald Odita is an abstract painter born in Enugu, Nigeria and currently based in Philadelphia. He has exhibited nationally and internationally in art institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2025); Brooklyn Museum (2024); Baltimore Museum of Art (2019–2020); Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2019–2020); and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2015).
Abbe Schriber is Assistant Professor of Art History and African American Studies at University of South Carolina. Her research, writing, and teaching are invested in art’s role in liberation movements and ongoing struggles for racial justice; comparative transatlantic relations between the US South, Caribbean, and West Africa; public art; and Black-run spaces as focal points for reorienting art history.
Kaegan Sparks is Associate Curator of Exhibitions at the Mississippi Museum of Art, where she is site curator for Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight, organized by the Menil Collection (Fall 2025). In spring 2026 she will curate Coulter Fussell: The Proving Ground, the Mississippi-based artist’s first museum survey. Sparks is also an art historian, critic, and educator completing a PhD in art history at The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY).
Sur Rodney (Sur) is a Canadian-born writer, curator, and archivist who works collaboratively, drawing variously on performance, writing, and community archives. In 1972, at the age of 17, he discovered and became fascinated with the Lower East Side of Manhattan. A decade later, he produced broadcasts for Manhattan Cable TV and became renowned for his partnership with art dealer Gracie Mansion in the early 1980s. Sur served on the board of Visual AIDS from 1995–2010 and established the Visual AIDS Archive Project, a web-based resource for curators, educators, and researchers interested in utilizing art to fight AIDS.
Alexandra M. Thomas is an Assistant Professor of Art History and Affiliated Faculty in Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at Fordham University. Her teaching and research focus on African and African diasporic art histories with an emphasis on gender, sexuality, and migration.
