Walter Anderson Museum of Art

The Walter Anderson Museum of Art in Mississippi will create an initiative to foster healing dialogue about the realities of death, memory, and rebirth in nature and society as the nation moves toward recovery from COVID-19. The museum will partner with regional libraries and communities to develop this project, which will include an exhibition of memento mori (reminders of mortality) and material culture from the museum’s collection and that of the University of Mississippi Museum; an oral history program capturing and preserving intergenerational community members’ reflections on death and remembrance; and a publication placing artwork from the exhibition in conversation with community narratives. The museum and its partners will distribute the publication to libraries statewide as a lasting local record of this period of recovery and catharsis.