The first major museum exhibition devoted to the art and life of L.V. Hull opens March 20, 2026, at the Mississippi Museum of Art (MMA/the Museum). L.V. Hull: Love Is a Sensation is presented in partnership with the L.V. Hull Legacy Center (Legacy Center), a project of the Arts Foundation of Kosciusko in Kosciusko, MS. The Legacy Center, which includes Hull’s preserved home, will also open in March 2026 with a parallel exhibition and related programming.
The exhibition at MMA explores how the self-taught artist L.V. Hull (1942–2008) blended artmaking with Southern hospitality to craft a creative practice that engaged neighbors and admirers from around the world. Working with found and donated objects, paint, and glue, Hull produced both striking standalone works and a vibrant, immersive, art environment at her home of 34 years in the small town of Kosciusko, MS.
Understanding Hull’s relationship to her community and environment begins with the home at the center of her daily life. After purchasing her 900-square-foot home in 1974 with wages from domestic work, the self-proclaimed “Unusual Artist” used it as a living space, studio, canvas, and gallery. She decorated virtually every surface of the house and its contents, front porch, and garden with carefully arranged assemblages of everyday objects and painted signs, often embellished with dot patterns. The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2024 and is the first home and studio of a Black female visual artist to be included on the Register at the level of National Significance.
Love Is a Sensation celebrates Hull’s legacy through some 300 artworks, documentation of her home/studio environment, and ephemera from her personal archive. MMA’s presentation emphasizes the full range of Hull’s production—from large-scale pieces and assemblages to recreations of her richly adorned domestic environment—situating her work within a broader cultural and artistic context.
The L.V. Hull Legacy Center in Kosciusko offers a deeply place-based dimension to Love Is a Sensation, featuring archival materials, personal ephemera, and works Hull created for neighbors and friends that center her enduring relationships with her community and illuminate the networks of mutual care that sustained her practice. Though her art environment no longer exists, visitors will also be able to enter the nearby preserved home of the artist, where traces of her arrangements remain visible on the walls, providing a rare, site-specific encounter with the space that sparked her three decades of creative expression.
Love Is a Sensation is organized by guest curators Ryan N. Dennis, Co-Director and Chief Curator at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; Annalise Flynn, an independent curator and arts administrator; and Yaphet Smith, a lawyer, writer, documentary filmmaker, and friend of Hull’s. Flynn also manages SPACES Archives at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, which is dedicated to studying, documenting, and advocating for the preservation of art environments like Hull’s.
Smith serves as the liaison with Hull’s estate, President of the Keysmith Foundation (the steward of her historic home), and Vice President of Curation for the Arts Foundation of Kosciusko, which is developing the L.V. Hull Legacy Center (Legacy Center). Smith is also the director of an affectionate one-hour home movie portrait of Hull that includes her quest to present a specially made work of art—a plaquette—to Blues legend B.B. King. Also called Love Is a Sensation, the documentary will premiere in spring 2026 at the Museum in Jackson and Legacy Center in Kosciusko.
For Laurie Hearin McRee Director of MMA, Betsy Bradley, “L.V. Hull’s work reminds us that artistic innovation is not confined to traditional spaces or formal training. Her home was her studio, her canvas, and the expression of a deeply rooted creativity that resonates with Mississippi’s cultural story. Presenting her work at MMA affirms our belief that artists like Hull are essential to a fuller understanding of American art history.”
The curatorial team said, “Hull represents a long tradition of rural Mississippi artists who work outside the mainstream artworld and who have been historically marginalized, resulting in an incomplete account of American creativity and art history. Love Is a Sensation contextualizes Hull as an important Mississippi artist who was deeply rooted in community, but also a creative force engaged in the significant global tradition of placemaking.”
Yaphet Smith added, “Visiting L.V. was its own immersive artistic experience. One visitor depicted in the documentary observed that it was, ‘hard to tell where the art starts and L.V. begins. She had some eggs boiling on the stove, and it was like that was part of the whole thing.’ Together, the documentary and companion exhibitions once again immerse us in L.V.’s world, providing a visceral reminder of the transformative power of art.”
The exhibition is presented with support from Teiger Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation, Feild Co-op, Mississippi Humanities Council, Visit Mississippi, and Visit Jackson.
Press photography and captions are at this link.
About the L.V. Hull Legacy Center
Opening in March 2026, the L.V. Hull Legacy Center is a new visual arts campus on Hull’s street in Kosciusko, MS, that includes Hull’s preserved home. Visitors are encouraged to view the exhibitions at both MMA in Jackson and the Legacy Center in Kosciusko in order to gain a more complete understanding of Hull’s life and practice. Focusing on Hull’s special relationship to place, the exhibition at the Legacy Center acknowledges the many people who united to support her during her lifetime and to preserve her legacy following her death in 2008. With exhibitions, programs, community meeting spaces, artist residencies, and a garden, the Legacy Center will provide additional opportunities for visitors to learn more about Hull’s practice and her place in the cultural history of Kosciusko, the birthplace of civil rights activist James Meredith and cultural icon Oprah Winfrey. For more information, visit www.lvhull.org.
The first phase of the Legacy Center’s construction is almost complete and was supported by the Mississippi Arts Commission’s (MAC) Building Fund for the Arts. Fundraising is underway for the next phase, also partially supported by MAC, and will include building a creative studio and renovating an existing barn into an open-air space for workshops, performances, screenings, and other community events.
