Bearing Witness Opening Events

Friday, September 10 - Saturday, September 11, 2021

Bearing Witness: Opening Events

Friday, 6PM: Reception with artist Jason Bouldin

Saturday, 10AM and 1:30PM: Gallery Talks with artist Jason Bouldin

The Walter Anderson Museum of Art invites you to commemorate the opening reception of our newest exhibition, Bearing Witness: Southern Visual Elegies. This exhibition features the works of artist Jason Bouldin (b. 1965) alongside those of American master Walter Inglis Anderson (1903-1965) in a sensitive exploration of their depictions of dead nature, or nature morte. The exhibition explores themes of mourning, ritual, and memory through a Southern lens. Further context is provided by the inclusion of objects of folk art and material culture from the University of Mississippi Museum’s permanent collection. Free to the public. 

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 is financially assisted by the National Endowment for the Humanities through the Mississippi Humanities Council.

Masks are required for these events. 

RSVP requested.

Jason Bouldin is the only living artist in this exhibition. His late father, the esteemed Mississippi portrait painter Marshall Bouldin, shared his knowledge with his sons and encouraged them to spend time in his studio as children. Jason began his professional career as a painter in 1991 after a two year apprenticeship with his father. Bouldin’s commissioned portraits hang in such varied locations as the United States Department of Agriculture, Harvard University, Tulane University Law School, the Mississippi State Capitol, and more than a dozen federal courthouses; including portraits of former governor William Winter for the lobby of the William F. Winter Archives and History Building, and Medgar Evers and Myrlie Evers-Williams for the Mississippi Museum of Art. While he is most widely known for his portraiture, Jason’s personal work explores the artist’s relationship to nature.

“Deceased game and fowl have often been used as subjects by artists either for opportunities to improve on technique or to display their abilities of convincingly mimicking various surfaces and textures. The memento mori or vanitas still life has been used as a didactic metaphor about the fleeting nature of life. I hope these works may not be viewed simply as studies, nor as any moral lesson; but rather as invitations to consider, to look with patience, to honor, to pay homage. These paintings were created without an audience in mind. They were made as very personal responses to the discarded objects and forgotten creatures which happened to come across my path – they are a tribute, a grieving, a wonder, an effort to be attentive, an attempt to offer testimony and evidence – to bear witness.”

– Jason Bouldin