Description

Founded in 1916, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art (MBMA), located in historic Overton Park, holds the largest art collection, and only collection of world art, in a three-state region. Collection highlights include European, American, and contemporary art. 
MBMA has been invited to apply for a Museum Partnerships for Social Justice Project grant. The project aims to engage museums in dialogues that develop and disseminate anti-racist project models and implementation frameworks. MBMA will partner with its mentor, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (ISGM). ISGM will conduct convenings across the staff of the two museums and with external partners, to share models for anti-racist content development, community outreach, exhibition strategies, and program planning. ISGM’s case studies will include two forthcoming exhibitions of work by artists of color.
Phase two will focus on the development of a parallel project at MBMA, with ISGM in an advisory role. MBMA’s project will be an exhibition and catalog project curated by the museum’s Joyce Blackmon Curatorial Fellow in African American Art and the Art of the African Diaspora. The Fellow works with the museum’s curatorial department to illuminate, share, and expand the museum’s holdings of works by artists of African descent. Informed by its dialogues with ISGM, MBMA will expand the Fellow’s role and support their project work and community outreach. MBMA will additionally draw on the partnership as it develops a community-based affinity group to explore and expand its holdings of African American and African Diasporic art. 
MBMA has committed to work more urgently toward greater DEAI, issuing a statement last June that acknowledged its own history of inequity: the museum was integrated in 1960. MBMA is now undertaking DEAI work more wholistically to meet its obligations to a Memphis community that is 66% African American and 72% people of color. (At present, 40% of MBMA patrons are people of color, including 33% of regular admission visitors. The museum’s Board is 14% people of color, and its current Board Chair is the first African American to hold the position.) MBMA recognizes the urgency of reaching and engaging diverse communities in ways that are sensitive, thoughtful, and collaborative. It has completed DEAI workshops, which have set the stage for a larger initiative to prepare the museum for its relocation to downtown Memphis in 2026 and its leadership role on the city’s recovery and momentum through the arts.