The B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center in Indianola, Miss., tells many intertwining, Mississippi-steeped stories through the life and lens of one of the state’s most beloved and most talented sons. A major new grant will help add one more chapter, with an exhibition on the nearby Club Ebony, now undergoing restorations and renovations. Club Ebony was a major stop on the original Chitlin’ Circuit, a cross-country network of venues where famed Black performers entertained crowds in the era of racial segregation and beyond.
In Utica, a new grant to the Mississippi Center for Cultural Production—known more familiarly as Sipp Culture—will spur development of a 15-year strategy, support its comprehensive work with Southern artists, and fold into its project to rehab a Main Street space in town into a cultural center and commercial kitchen.
The B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center is among 17 organizations across nine states to receive a South Arts Southern Cultural Treasures grant. Photo courtesy B.B. King Museum
South Arts selected the two Mississippi institutions to receive the grants, $300,000 over three years, in partnership with the Ford Foundation. Funds are part of a $6 million Southern Cultural Treasures initiative supporting Black, Indigenous and People of Color-led arts and cultural organizations across the southeast U.S. Seventeen organizations spanning nine states, chosen from more than 240 applications, received grants in this initiative.
In Mississippi, the B.B. King Museum and Sipp Culture fill vital roles in their respective small towns as hubs for arts and culture, education, and outreach.
“It’s very significant, especially when you think of an organization such as mine, that’s in the rural Mississippi Delta,” B.B. King Museum Executive Director Malika Polk-Lee said, adding that the accolade is one of the few grants with funds to help cover operating costs. That flexibility was particularly attractive and key for the capacity-building, planning and sustainability that can help small museums and cultural centers grow and move forward, she explained.
Mississippi artist Ambrose displays artworks in Sipp Culture’s White Oak Artist Residency space. Photo by Melisa Cardona.
“We were just over the top, elated about being
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