An art exhibition at the Tate Modern in London in the mid-1990s remains as vivid now as when then-Boston University student Chase Quinn, studying abroad, first confronted it. Artist Carrie Mae Weems’ series “From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried” about the depiction of African Americans in photography unfolded with a powerful narrative across more than 30 images, including those of enslaved people and figures from history. “You Became A Scientific Profile,” “An Anthropological Debate,” “You Became Mammie, Mama …” read text on the images, and “You Became An Accomplice” on a picture of Josephine Baker.
“I just remember, like, a gut punch,” Quinn said. This critical take on the subjugation of African Americans “just lit me up. … I hadn’t really experienced that before.” Often, stories dealing with race, presented at museums, are simplified, reduced to a struggle narrative or a triumph narrative, he said. “What excited me so much about Weems’ work is that it was complicating that.”
“That inspires me to this day,” Quinn, Mississippi Museum of Art’s inaugural creative director and curator of special projects, said. In this role, he oversees the museum’s curatorial and education departments, focusing on inclusive, cohesive content development and storytelling. Quinn started at MMA in January, on the heels of a successful run at the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, S.C., as co-director of education and programs and curator of special projects.
A 2024 Garden & Gun Magazine headline pegged him “The Maverick” for dreaming big and shaking up the status quo. “I really identified with it,” Quinn said of a title he’s proud to wear. It captures the different disciplines he pulls together, and his unorthodox approach. “A maverick, to me, is someone who is a pragmatist—someone who very much knows, as my grandmother would say, that there’s more than one way to skin a cat,” he said. “And that has really characterized my career.
“Part of the charm of a maverick is that you don’t always know what to expect,” Quinn added.
MMA Director Betsy Bradley was on the lookout for a chief curator and then a chief educator for the museum when a colleague’s tip pointed her Quinn’s way. As talks progressed, she and Quinn came up with this novel role. Rather than separating curatorial and education departments, “I wanted them to be more seamlessly imagined,” Bradley said, so that people’s experiences with the art and the stories it represents are deeper, broader and more meaningful. “We’re very excited about the energy and creativity he’s bringing to the role.”
Quinn didn’t grow up in the South, but he has long been steeped in the elements of the region, from his grandfather’s Mobile, Alabama, roots to the nearly 10 years he lived in Charleston. So, there was a certain appeal in Jackson and the opportunity at MMA. “It was a place (where) I’d be able to experiment, where the people were very engaged with the arts. Mississippi in general has such a strong association with storytelling. Some of my favorite authors are from Mississippi,” he said, mentioning Richard Wright and Kiese Laymon.
“I really love working for institutions that punch above their weight,” he said, “The Mississippi Museum of Art certainly has a highly respected national profile, but I think, as a general matter, the bias that many people have about the South, about places like Mississippi, is sometimes an advantage. Because I think really incredible things can happen when nobody’s watching.”
Born in Orange County, California, Quinn was just 3 years old when his family moved to Wilmington, Delaware, and then as a 5th grader, to Spokane, Washington. But his notion of home is rooted in those childhood years and summers in Wilmington, where his mother’s family and other relatives live. He developed a critical eye practically by osmosis in a household that constantly, actively engaged with media.
“When we would watch TV or watch the news, people weren’t just passively consuming information. There was always kind of a call and response to the news of the day—questioning it, questioning the reporting—and I feel like that is in my blood, the curiosity and critical lens that I bring to my work.”
Quinn, 38, studied English literature at Boston University, and his introduction to world-class museums there, via a friend majoring in art history, was transformative. “I would tag along with her to the (Museum of Fine Arts), Boston, (where) you’d see the John Singer Sargent murals at the public library. There was the ( Institute of Contemporary Art). I just remember feeling so inspired by those visits.” Foodies might find great restaurants in whatever city they visit. With Quinn, however, “My first inclination is to find the museums,” he chuckled.
His study abroad in London included a drama class, with an assignment to see a production in the West End once weekly and review it. His first opportunity to cut his teeth in art criticism also served as his entry point to museum work, he said. Quinn worked as an art critic for more than a decade before starting work as a museum professional.
He pinpointed his current role’s opportunities at MMA as a career high in this field. A previous pinnacle was the landmark exhibition he curated at the Gibbes Museum of Art before he left, “Something Terrible May Happen: The Art of Aubrey Beardsley and Edward ‘Ned’ I.R. Jennings.”
“It was the first time anyone had linked the influence of queer artists and creative producers at the turn of the century to the Charleston Renaissance,” he said, adding that the small yet daring show had a lot of impact, he said. “I didn’t have a rulebook, and I was nonetheless able to garner the support of Harvard Art Museums, the Princeton Special Collections Library, all of these incredible institutions who were supportive of this concept and this argument.”
Find a good example of Quinn’s “wraparound” approach at MMA in the tie-ins during the quilt exhibition “Of Salt and Spirit: Black Quilters in the American South,” which closed in May. The team’s goal was to draw in new, more inclusive audiences, plus bring something new to the conversation. They thought of quilting’s use as a tool for remembrance, and as a tool for activism, particularly in the AIDS Memorial Quilt. Also, Jackson remains at the top of national lists for new HIV infection rates, an issue disproportionately affecting Black communities.
Working with feedback from local Black HIV/AIDS organizations, the museum organized a panel with a cross-section of activists, artists and organizations for a discussion of public health and art as a tool for social change. They established a new national partner with the National AIDS Memorial in San Francisco for the loan of a square of Jackson’s contribution to the AIDS Memorial Quilt, and acquired the first work of art during Quinn’s tenure, from one of the panelists, Jackson-born photographer D’Angelo Lovell Williams.
“So, through this one thread that we pulled … we were able to have meaningful dialogue with members of our LGBTQ-plus communities here in Jackson, we were able to have this important program that married art and public health, (and) we were able to make a new acquisition for the permanent collection,” he said, in addition to bringing in new audiences for the exhibition.
“That’s, I think, really illustrative of how I see curatorial and education working together in lockstep, when we’re being intentional about the work and approaching the work from a real deep sense of integrity,” he continued.
After-hours events at the museum lean into the interdisciplinary approach, as in the summer’s “Capital Pictures” series that paired the silent films of Oscar Micheaux with improvised live scores by a rotating set of musicians and DJs. The closing celebration for the “2025 Mississippi Invitational” on Sept. 4 riffs on the exhibition’s “Call Home” theme with an open-mic night at the museum, “The Call Home Mixtape,” inviting local writers, storytellers and musicians to sign up for a chance to share onstage what home means to them.
Quinn is eager, too, for opportunities the upcoming exhibition “Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight,” will bring, for interdisciplinary programs that can help boost viewers’ comfort level with abstract art. “Our hope is to show, through Overstreet’s really gorgeous and dynamic work, just the childlike awe that art can inspire.”
On the curatorial side, he is interested in recontextualizing works in the permanent collection, identifying artists whose legacies may have been “undersung” and moving conversations forward in new ways, particularly discourse around race. “The way we talk about Black art and Black experiences can feel very rudimentary. There’s so much to that experience between struggle and triumph, and what is that gray area? … What about all those other human experiences beyond the familiar metaphors that we’re constantly being fed?”
Engagement, education and impact can make a difference in the community. “The political landscape is very divisive,” Quinn noted. “There are so many battles, I think, that we thought we were perhaps on the other side of, and it’s only become clearer every day that actually now is the time to use every tool in our toolkit to facilitate educational opportunities, opportunities for dialogue, so that we can come through this more unified. And, I think art is a unique tool to do that.”
Know a Mississippian you believe deserves some public recognition? Nominate them for a potential Person of the Day article at mfp.ms/pod.
