Mississippi Arts
+ Entertainment Experience

We worked closely with The MAX’s staff to build experiences that showcase Mississippi’s arts and entertainment legacy, honor their creative legends, and inspire tomorrow’s artists.
Services Provided
The MAX was created to showcase Mississippi’s arts and entertainment legacy, honor their creative legends and inspire tomorrow’s artists.
Upon entering the museum through the Hall of Fame rotunda, a 16,000 square foot interactive installation greets visitors, featuring artists from Mississippi, “the land of legends.”
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Throughout the galleries, visitors interact with cutting-edge technology and hear personal accounts from Mississippi artists about the importance of their home.
Visitors are invited to explore the Land, the Home, the Community, the Church, the People, and the Places, all of which make Mississippi such a unique part of the United States.

As visitors move throughout the interpretive galleries, they explore different ordinary scenes from life in rural Mississippi. Each scene tells the story of the artists whose creativity was nurtured in that environment, and in that seemingly modest moment.

 

From sitting on the front porch to singing in the church choir, cooking with family to toiling in the fields; the roots of creativity took hold.

Visitors hear authors discuss their work and process in their own words, and then hear an excerpt of their writing read aloud as projections bring the typewriter to life and show the story spilling across the writer’s canvas of expression: the desk.
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The kitchen nourished creativity, inspiration and connection for chefs native to MIssissippi. In the Kitchen gallery, visitors get to know local chefs through their stories and their signature recipes.

Reactive surfaces drive intimate moments with acclaimed storytellers.

At the interactive table, visitors move plates from the runner or pass them along to each other, in a symbolic family meal.
Tears kept welling up, coming to the surface as each tableau lay witness to yet another dimension of my past, the human experience explored, displayed, celebrated in all the beautiful forms that artists use to express their understanding, or their struggle to understand, the human experience.
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Walk inside and explore the celebration of artists and performers who came from Mississippi and changed the landscape of American media arts.
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Inside the mid-century electronic store, a 3D printed display of radios and televisions and computers is activated with playful projection mapping.
Paint and mold clay like a great Mississippi artist.

The Boat film features the inspiring water landscapes that shaped and influenced the oeuvres of three significant Mississippi painters: Walter Anderson, Marie Hull, and William Collingsworth.

This theatrical media environment presents a boat ride through the rivers, swamps and ocean. Using machine learning, the landscapes once visited by Anderson, Hull, and Collingsworth are transformed through painterly filters inspired by their artworks.

The MAX is the only museum to celebrate the artistic process as opposed to its finished product. This way, creativity becomes accessible to everyone. Your product doesn’t have to be perfect, you don’t have to be famous. Everyone can make something and it is in the activity of making that people can find purpose.”

Credits

History Associates
Research

Paul Rosenthal
Script Writer

Roland, Woolworth and Associates
A/V Consultant

Available Light
Lighting

Solomon Group
Fabrication

LPK Architects
Architect