The Mississippi Museum of Art (MMA) is presenting Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight, the first major museum exhibition in thirty years devoted to the work of this pioneering Mississippi-born painter. Organized by the Menil Collection in Houston, where it was on view earlier this year, the exhibition brings together examples from three phases of Overstreet’s painting practice: angular, geometric canvases from the 1960s; the sculptural Flight Patterns series from the 1970s; and the large-scale Facing the Door of No Return series from the 1990s. Featuring 25 works, the exhibition is on view November 1, 2025, through January 25, 2026.
Betsy Bradley, Laurie Hearin McRee Director, Mississippi Museum of Art, said, “We are thrilled to host Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight at the Mississippi Museum of Art. Overstreet, who spent his childhood here in Mississippi, went on to shape conversations in American art far beyond our state’s borders. The Museum has long celebrated his legacy, having displayed his works from our own collection, so it is both meaningful and natural for us to bring this full exhibition to our community. His art carries a spirit of joy, experimentation, and wonder, and we are excited to share that experience with our visitors.”
Natalie Dupêcher, Associate Curator of Modern Art at the Menil Collection, curated the exhibition. She said, “We have been honored to work closely with the estate of Joe Overstreet to create this significant presentation of his work. Overstreet’s formally adventurous, culturally engaged, and politically responsive abstract painting brilliantly expands the canon of 20th century art.”
The exhibition’s presentation in Jackson marks a homecoming for Overstreet, whose unique visual imagination was cultivated during his early childhood on his family’s pulpwood farm in rural Conehatta, Mississippi. Although he left the state at a young age, the South continued to influence Overstreet’s later work. When Mississippi became an epicenter of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements in the 1960s, he and other African American artists across the country grappled with art’s role in societal transformation. Looking for new, unifying models of Black cultural identity and expression, Overstreet joined a larger groundswell of poets, musicians, dramatists, and visual artists that collectively came to be known as the Black Arts Movement.
In 1967, Overstreet began to build intricate, shaped canvas constructions, departing from the representational style he had pursued in the early 1960s. In these works, he fabricated angular, geometric frames whose underlying structures are often reflected in their bold painted surface compositions. Many of these abstract designs were inspired by African and other non-Western visual cultures.
Overstreet’s best-known paintings, the Flight Patterns from the early 1970s, are central to the exhibition. To create them, he applied brightly colored paint to loose canvas and suspended the resultant work between the floors, walls, and ceilings using metal grommets and cotton ropes. While Overstreet intended the ropes to evoke the United States’s brutal history of lynching, he also perceived these works as hopeful and redemptive. He described them as “birds in flight” that strive to “take off, to lift up, rather than be held down.”
In the 1990s, following a trip to Senegal and the House of Slaves memorial on Gorée Island, Overstreet created the series Facing the Door of No Return: monumental abstractions that address questions of displacement and inheritance for the African diaspora. He described these paintings as “personal, emotional examinations of my past, present, and future.” Works such as Gorée (1993) display the artist’s material experimentation. The painting’s weathered, luminous translucency evokes the “drifting opaque dust” and “searing white sunlight” he encountered in Senegal.
Organized in collaboration with the artist’s estate, the exhibition includes key loans from North American museums and private collections, as well as many works that have never been publicly exhibited. Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue published by Yale University Press.
Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight is organized by the Menil Collection, Houston. Its presentation in Jackson is supported by Teiger Foundation, Henry Luce Foundation, and Visit Jackson. The Kenkeleba House Convening is supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art and the Henry Luce Foundation.
Related Programs
November 21, 2025 | Jackson State University’s African Drum and Dance Ensemble
MMA is partnering with Jackson State University’s African Drum and Dance Ensemble to present a one-night-only performance on November 21, 2025, at 7 PM, of West African and Afro-Caribbean works featuring both African and diasporic instruments, songs, and dances. Overstreet’s practice was significantly influenced by interdisciplinary collaborations and the desire to reestablish connections to his African heritage.
Free, registration required.
January 23–24, 2026 | Kenkeleba House: “The Last Surviving Downtown Art Collective”
Coinciding with the exhibition’s closing, MMA is hosting a two-day program on January 23 and 24, 2026, exploring Overstreet’s work with Kenkeleba House, a community arts organization that Overstreet co-founded on New York’s Lower East Side in 1974. The event connects this important part of Overstreet’s career to Black-led arts initiatives active in Jackson today.
Free, registration required.
About the Artist
Born in rural Conehatta, Mississippi, in 1933, Joe Overstreet began his career in the California Bay Area in the 1950s, participating in the Beat scene and exhibiting in local galleries and jazz clubs. In 1958, he moved to New York, where he joined a vibrant community of artists who were redefining abstraction.
In dialogue with the Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the 1960s, Overstreet made representational paintings as well as abstract shaped canvases, and in the 1970s he removed his works from the wall entirely with his groundbreaking Flight Patterns series. Meridian Fields, a series of paintings on wire mesh from the early 2000s, was partially inspired by the artist’s memories of Mississippi.
In 1974, Overstreet’s deep commitment to his creative community in New York led him to co-found Kenkeleba House, a downtown gallery and studio space that supports artists of color to the present day. Overstreet remained an active artist and cultural leader until his passing in New York City in 2019. In 2018, he was awarded the Mississippi Governor’s Art Award for Excellence in Visual Art.
Overstreet’s work has been featured in significant recent exhibitions including: Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power (2017–20; Tate Modern, London; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Broad Museum, Los Angeles; De Young Museum, San Francisco; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston); The World Goes Pop (2015; Tate Modern); Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties (2014–15; Brooklyn Museum; Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH; Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin); and Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960–1980 (2011–13; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; MoMA PS1, New York; Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA).
About the Mississippi Museum of Art
Established in 1911, the Mississippi Museum of Art is dedicated to connecting Mississippi to the world and the power of art to the power of community. The Museum’s permanent collection includes paintings, photography, multimedia works, and sculpture by Mississippi, American, and international artists. The largest art museum in the state, the Mississippi Museum of Art offers a vibrant roster of exhibitions, public programs, artistic and community partnerships, educational initiatives, and opportunities for exchange year-round. Programming is developed with community involvement to ensure that a multiplicity of voices and perspectives are represented. Signature programs include the Center for Art and Public Exchange, a community-driven effort to ensure local relevance of MMA’s offerings; the Annie Laurie Swaim Hearin Memorial Exhibition, a biannual, nationally recognized exhibition program; and the Mississippi Invitational and Jane Hiatt Fellowship, which promotes the careers of working artists in the state. Located at 380 South Lamar Street in downtown Jackson, the Mississippi Museum of Art and its programs are sponsored in part by the City of Jackson and Visit Jackson. Support is also provided in part by funding from the Mississippi Arts Commission, a state agency, and in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.
For more information, visit www.msmuseumart.org
