Memphis College of Art

5:30 pm, Wednesday, December 16th

MidtownMemphis.Org is pleased to honor the Memphis College of Art with a Mojo of Midtown Award for eighty-four years of sending fine artists or all kinds into our community and into the world. It's a long legacy. We wish it could be longer. It was called the James Lee Memorial Art Academy when the first classes were offered in 1936.In 1959, by then known as the Memphis Art Academy, the College moved into a permanent home in Overton Park. The building, Rust Hall, is a showplace of mid-century modern architecture created by Roy Harrover. In 1985 the school changed its name to Memphis College of Art. MCA was always a small, private school offering undergraduate and graduate degrees in fields as varied as drawing, painting, photography, graphic design, animation and more. A magnet for the artistic among us, MCA drew students from around town as well as from the Delta and the Bootheel and beyond. Jeanne Seagle, a revered Memphis artist for decades, first visited from Jackson, Mississippi while still a high school student. It was, she says, "just the most wonderful thing. There were Beatniks playing bongo drums and wearing goatees. And girls in leotards. People like me," she says. "A campus full of non-conformist, creative, nerdy, artistic people." The story of the demise of MCA has been told often and this is not the time or place to tell it again. Laura Hine has been President of MCA since 2017 and as the school prepares to close she now sees the big picture of MCA . "Almost any public art project that you see in Memphis has the fingerprints of MCA students and faculty on it, "she says. Among those artists and faculty are some of most celebrated names in American art; Burton Callicott, Dolph Smith, Veda Reed, Murray Riss, Ebet Roberts, John McIntire, Ted Faiers, Ted Rust, Dorothy Sturm and many more. Artists who studied at MCA went into the wider world to make their reputations. Others made their homes here, enriching our neighborhoods and our lives. Artists like sculptors Mark Nowell and Carroll Todd, painters Mollie Riggs, Jeri Ledbetter, graphic artist Jerry House and Karen 'Bottle' Capps (who created the Mojo Awards we hand out tonight), all call Cooper Young home. We're pleased tonight to salute the Memphis College of Art with a Mojo of Midtown Award.