Elizabeth Abston is an Accredited Member of the International Society of Appraisers and is based in Jackson, Mississippi. She was employed as the Curator of American Art for over four years at the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson before founding her own fine art appraisal and advisory business. In her professional capacity, she appraises fine art, works with clients on building and managing their art collections, and participates in curatorial projects with museums and nonprofits.
With extensive knowledge in art from the Southeastern United States, Abston has curated exhibitions that expand the literature and provenance of Southern art, including New Symphony of Time, Picturing Mississippi, 1817-2017: Land of Plenty, Pain, and Promise, and Art Across Mississippi: Twelve Exhibitions for Twelve Communities. In 2021, she began extensively working with the Andrew Bucci estate to help coordinate and organize a series of exhibitions in 2022-2023 that celebrate the artist’s centennial year.
Publications include “Of Identity and Place: Picturing Mississippi in the Twenty-First Century,” in the Picturing Mississippi catalogue and “Hank Willis Thomas: Flying Geese,” an online essay for the Center for Art & Public Exchange. Other published pieces have appeared in Mississippi magazine and Delta magazine since 2007.
Abston regularly participates in art programming and podcasts focused on the arts in Mississippi, most recently a lunchtime ArtTalk at the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, MPB Arts Hour and Sarah Story’s Art Life Stories. She has also been featured on Jackson Free Press’ Let’s Talk Jackson: Art podcast series. She was a moderator on the “Place in Contemporary Practice” panel for artists Noah Saterstrom and McArthur Binion in Bringing Forward the Past: Art, Identity, and the American South, a symposium that saw numerous artists, scholars, and critics from around the country participate in discourse on the legacies and impact of art in the South.
Abston has a MA in art history from the University of Texas, San Antonio and a BA from Rhodes College in Memphis, TN. She studied art in Siena and Florence, Italy through the Richmond University of London. Most recently as Curator of American Art at the Mississippi Museum of Art, her primary responsibilities included curating exhibitions from the permanent collection, managing acquisitions, and coordinating traveling exhibitions for the Museum’s statewide affiliate network. Her previous experience includes time at the contemporary artist residency and gallery Artpace as an arts educator and two years in collections management at the McNay Art Museum, both in San Antonio, Texas. A member of the International Society of Appraisers since 2019, Abston has been a longtime member of professional organizations including the Southeastern Museum Conference (SEMC) and the Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC).
Selected curated exhibitions:
Jennifer Drinkwater: The What’s Good Project, 2023, St. Andrew’s Center for Performing Arts, Ridgeland, MS
In His Element: Andrew Bucci’s Explorations of Place, 2022, Firehouse Gallery, Vicksburg, MS
Spectacles of Modern Life: French Art from the Permanent Collection, 2020
New Symphony of Time (co-curator), 2019 - ongoing, Mississippi Museum of Art
Visual Voices: Contemporary Chickasaw Art (in-house curator), 2019, Mississippi Museum of Art
Central to Their Lives: Southern Women Artists in the Johnson Collection (in-house curator), 2019, Mississippi Museum of Art
Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer (in-house curator), 2019, Mississippi Museum of Art
Hank Willis Thomas: Flying Geese, 2019, Mississippi Museum of Art
Picturing Mississippi 1817 - 2017: Land of Plenty, Pain, and Promise (co-curator), 2018, Mississippi Museum of Art
Eudora Welty's Women, 2018, various museums
More than Meets the Eye: Art of the Mississippi Blues, 2018, various museums
Common Passages: Reconsidering the American Scene, 2017, Mississippi Museum of Art
Sunlight and Shadows: The Paintings of Kate Freeman Clark, 2017, Mississippi Museum of Art
Leon Kroll's Terminal Yards and Artists of the Armory Show, 2016, Mississippi Museum of Art
Reflections: Modern Masters from the Collection, 2016, Mississippi Museum of Art
