Joe Overstreet : Taking Flight - Mississippi Museum of Art
(Photo Courtesy of Mississippi Museum of Art)
Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight—the first major museum exhibition in thirty years devoted to the work of the pioneering Mississippi-born painter—is on view at the Mississippi Museum of Art through January 25, 2026. Renowned for his innovative approach to non-representational painting, Overstreet consistently sought to intertwine abstraction and social politics, creating vibrant work that feels hopeful.
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. It includes key loans from United States museums and private collections, as well as works from the MMA’s collection and major paintings from the artist’s estate that have rarely been on view. Featuring 25 works, the exhibition is on view November 1, 2025, through January 25, 2026.
Betsy Bradley and 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.” (Above - right: Joe Overstreet, Untitled, 1971)
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. (Above - left: Joe Overstreet, Untitled, (Sun Ra Series), 1967)
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 Joe Overstreet, Untitled (Sun Ra series), 1967 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. (Above- right: Joe Overstreet, Evolution, 1970)
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.
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 Joe Overstreet with his painting North Star in 1968 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).
On January 23-24, 2026, MMA will host a two-day program that explores Overstreet’s work with Kenkeleba House, a community arts organization that Overstreet cofounded on New York’s Lower East Side in 1974. The event will connect this important part of Overstreet’s career to Black-led arts initiatives active in Jackson today.
(Photo Courtesy of Mississippi Museum of Art)
Born in rural Conehatta, Mississippi, artist Joe Overstreet (1933–2019) spent six decades expanding the possibilities of abstract painting. His vibrant works break through the four edges of a conventional canvas, leap off the wall, and expand to immense proportions. Unfolding in space like kites, sails, or the patterns of a kaleidoscope, they invite viewers to see and move through paintings in new ways.
Though Overstreet migrated away from the South at a young age, he cultivated a visual imagination there that would ground and propel a lifetime of artistic experimentation in a changing world. When Mississippi became an epicenter of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements in the 1960s, Overstreet and other African American artists 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 came to be known as the Black Arts Movement.
Surveying the artist’s dynamic contributions to this movement and beyond, Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight tells the story of his life’s work in abstraction. The exhibition brings together three phases of Overstreet’s painting practice: angular, geometric constructions from the 1960s, the sculptural Flight Pattern series from the 1970s, and the large-scale, immersive Facing the Door of No Return series from the 1990s. “Like birds in flight,” as Overstreet described, his paintings embody a restless tendency “to take off, to lift up, rather than be held down.”
Coinciding with the exhibition’s closing, MMA will host a two-day program that explores Overstreet’s work with Kenkeleba House, a community arts organization that Overstreet cofounded on New York’s Lower East Side in 1974. Kenkeleba House: The Last Surviving Downtown Art Collective will connect this important part of Overstreet’s career to Black-led arts initiatives active in Jackson today. Visit msmuseumart.org to learn more and register.
(Photo Courtesy of Mississippi Museum of Art)
Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight is organized by the Menil Collection, Houston. Its presentation in Jackson is supported by Teiger Foundation, Henry Luce Foundation, Visit Mississippi, and Visit Jackson. The Kenkeleba House Convening is supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art and the Henry Luce Foundation.
