Page 52 - South Mississippi Living - October, 2020

safe & sound
#VisitMSResponsibly
The Cultural
Resilience
story by Julian Rankin
photos courtesy of the Walter Anderson Museum of Art
and by Katherine Swetman
Museums are about intimate connection
– close examination of priceless objects and beautiful artworks with family and friends – but 2020 has disrupted some of these most
foundational paradigms. The public health crisis made operating an art museum a much different endeavor, at times virtual and physically
separated from the original objects that ground our mission.
of the Walter Anderson Museum of Art
WAMA mobile app.
Julian Rankin is the Director of the Walter Anderson Museum of Art in Ocean Springs.
Walter Anderson Museum of Art
510 Washington Ave., Ocean Springs 228.872.3264 www.walterandersonmuseum.org
The Walter Anderson Museum of Art has seized the opportunity, in the face of new constraints, to embrace inventiveness. The three-month closure and cancellation of in-person programs challenged us
to exist in new spaces. For “true art,” Anderson writes, comes by embracing the void “so that imagination may fill the space between the trees.”
Fill the spaces, we did. We took to the digital frontier with 9 Lives: Cats of Walter Anderson, an online exhibition of five decades of Walter Anderson felines. We launched ART+, a multimedia educational resource for students and parents including lessons on science, mythology, early childhood education, and even yoga. We delivered virtual
STE(A)M camps through partnerships with public school educators and the
University of Southern Mississippi Marine Education Center. And if
you’ve followed our social media exploits, you might have seen the lighter side of things, as
sta members did their best imitations of Anderson
artworks.
When we did reopen in
June, we did so with a twelve-point COVID
Safety Pledge to keep visitors safe, along with a new
mobile app. We
continue to flex our new muscles, through a virtual programing series called Southern Art/Wider World funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The museum owes its resilience to support from donors, partners, and community members. This generosity has fueled us to confront the capricious here and now, while reaching out toward the bright and hopeful horizon.
On Horn Island in 1948, after a young pelican died in his arms, Anderson soldiered on, painting, “...trying to feel the beauty of the place through what had happened.” And then, assuredly,
he a irmed to himself – and to us – that despite the loss, “The beauty was there.”
WAMA Educator Anthony DiFatta as Walter Anderson’s “Saturn” panel in the Ocean Springs Community Center.
52 | October2020
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