Memphis Art Museum details four commissions across its new riverfront building

Memphis Art Museum announced on September 22 that four site-specific commissions by Jordan Ann Craig, Yunhee Min, Carlos Rosales-Silva and Eso Tolson are planned for its new downtown Memphis campus when it opens on December 6. The works will occupy spaces from the street-facing windows and theater to the parking structure and rooftop, making art part of the route through the new building.

The announcement gives visitors a more detailed picture of the new campus than the opening plans made public in June. At that point, the museum had named the four artists but said it would release details of their projects later, according to The Art Newspaper. The Daily Memphian reported on September 23 that the installations are planned for the museum’s grand opening day.

What visitors will find on the rooftop

Craig’s mural, Sharp Tongue; The Sky and the Heart Aflame, is planned for the rooftop art garden. The museum describes it as her largest public work to date. Its geometric patterns pay homage to historical beadwork by Northern Cheyenne and other Plains Indian artists, while its colors and changing appearance respond to sunset light and movement along the Mississippi River bluff. The museum says VIA Art Fund provided support for the commission.

A second rooftop commission, A Memphis for You, comes from Memphis-based graphic designer Eso Tolson. It uses hand lettering and a welcoming phrase that visitors will encounter in fragments, according to the museum. That placement means the rooftop will carry two newly commissioned works with different approaches: Craig’s large mural shaped by the river landscape and Tolson’s text-based installation addressing people who come to the museum.

Yunhee Min’s work connects the theater and street

Min’s Impressions (bluffs, mounds, landing) is planned to span two parts of the building. A retractable woven curtain measuring 92 yards, or 276 feet, will encircle the theater when fully deployed and extend across the mezzanine. A separate 66-foot lenticular installation will occupy street-facing facade windows, giving the commission a presence both inside and along the museum’s public edge.

The museum says Min developed the designs from rubbings she made at Cobblestone Landing, the mound at Chickasaw Heritage Park, Big River Crossing and Chucalissa. It describes the installation’s sloped form as an allusion to Mississippian mounds and the continuous curtain imagery as an evocation of the Mississippi River. These are the museum’s account of the artist’s sources and intended visual references; the work’s appearance in the building remains to be seen when the campus opens.

Carlos Rosales-Silva’s mural reaches the parking structure

The fourth commission extends into a less conventional exhibition space. Rosales-Silva’s Alma del rio is a mural for three interior walls of the parking structure. Its title means ‘soul of the river’ in Spanish, and the museum says a stylized Mississippi River runs across the work’s three sides.

The museum identifies sassafras leaves, Mississippian ceremonial mounds, the roofline of Rust Hall in Overton Park and Isaac Hayes’s desk at Stax Records among the mural’s motifs. Those references connect the garage work to the city’s landscape, architecture and music history. The announcement describes the planned imagery; it does not establish how visitors will react to the completed installation.

The commissions form part of a larger opening program

The four works are one part of a much larger opening program. The museum says its principal exhibition, Making Beauty: Hooks Brothers Studio, 1907-1984, will present 163 photographs from a studio that documented Black life in Memphis and the urban South. It has also announced 15 thematic presentations drawn from its collection. The Hooks Brothers exhibition is scheduled to run from December 6, 2026, to July 5, 2027.

The new building also marks a move downtown for the institution formerly known as the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, which operated in Overton Park. The Art Newspaper reported in June that the 123,500-square-foot riverfront building was designed by Herzog & de Meuron, with Memphis firm archimania as architect of record. It also reported the museum’s announcement that admission for Shelby County residents would be free in perpetuity.

Museum executive director Zoe Kahr said the commissions have connections to Memphis through the artists’ ties to the city or through regional history, culture and geography. The September announcement specifies the works’ intended locations and themes, but does not give their fees, explain how the artists were selected or confirm that installation is complete. For now, December 6 remains the planned opening date and the first scheduled opportunity to see the commissions in place.