Local artists, community leaders and businessmen and women gathered at the Inn on Whitworth Thursday to share their stories with the Mississippi Museum of Art for the museum’s Mapping a Modern Mississippi campaign.

Brookhaven residents were extremely interested in participating in Mapping a Modern Mississippi, a statewide grassroots storytelling and community building initiative that highlights the best and brightest across all sectors of Mississippi life, Director of Marketing and Communications Julian Rankin said.

“Brookhaven is one example of a unique and modern Mississippi place,” Rankin said. “You’ve got the school of arts here, which is helping to foster the next generation of creative thinkers and artists, and a lot of small business in a really cool downtown.

The Mississippi Museum of Art chose Brookhaven as one of its first stops because of the willingness community members showed in hosting its personnel and being a part of this initiative, Rankin said.

Mapping a Modern Mississippi takes its inspiration from the museum’s upcoming exhibitions of modern art, which feature groundbreaking work by Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Georgia O’Keeffe, Mark Rothko and more than 50 others artists. The work of these 20th century artists will be on view together in the state for the very first time from April 9 to Oct. 30 in “When Modern was Contemporary: Selections from the Roy R. Neuberger Collection.”

These iconic artists of American modernism ignited an aesthetic revolution in the post-war decades that changed the art world forever.

The museum is embracing the modern ethos of risk-taking and innovation embodied by these artists of the past and applying it to a contemporary Mississippi, finding and mapping the people and places all across the state who are themselves contributing their creativity, vision and fearless entrepreneurship to the formation of Mississippi’s future.

“We were inspired when learning about all of the artists who dared to be different in the past, that we wanted to find the people who dare to differ in Mississippi, including those in Brookhaven,” Rankin said. “Because of the nature of being in the south, many parts of the country see us as one thing, but by growing here, living here and working here, I know that Mississippi is way more nuanced than that. We wanted to talk about the exhibition in this campaign, but we wanted to do it through the voices of Mississippians.”

Rankin and Anik Kurkjian, with the Mississippi Museum of Art, interviewed several community leaders for the campaign including:

• Mississippi School of the Arts Executive Director Suzanne Hirsch

• Brookhaven-Lincoln County Chamber of Commerce marketing director Katie Nations

• Lincoln County Historical Society member Tammie Brewer

• Brookstock coordinator Don Jacobs

• Brookstock coordinator and Mississippi Musicians Hall of Fame Executive Director Shaw Furlow

• Artist and physician Kim Sessums

• Restaurant owner Matt Fitzimmons

• Entrepreneur Terry Pappas

• Musician Greg Russell

• Entrepreneur Betsy Belk

Each of these Brookhavenites’ stories will be featured on the museum’s website at www.msmuseumart.org. There, users can discover the stories of Brookhaven and the state, and explore an interactive map of modern places, as well as nominate other sites and people and submit their own stories of daring to differ. Through photographs, video and narrative, the modern pulse of Mississippi — embodied by its creative people — is celebrated and articulated. The stories of musicians and chefs are told alongside those of visionary CEOs, Mississippi rappers, urban farmers and small business owners.

All community members are encouraged to submit their own stories to the website, Rankin said.

“We want to use the energy of these people to keep pushing Mississippi forward,” Rankin said. “We want to push people to keep thinking creatively, to keep innovating and to keep making our state a better place to live. It’s always a work in progress and Mississippi certainly has a complicated history, but through this, we’re recognizing that complicated nature and embracing the good side of complication, which is uniqueness.”

Kurkjian added why she believes it’s important for Brookhavenites to share their experiences and for the state to get involved in Mapping a Modern Mississippi.

“Well for me, particularly as an outsider (from England), Mississippi gets a bad rap,” Kurkjian said. “It’s had a hard past and only the negative stories go out into the world about Mississippi, but since I’ve come to Mississippi, it’s just been phenomenal. Mississippians, I find, must be very humble people because you never hear about all the incredible things they are doing. I’m just constantly blown away by the fact that it seems to be in the DNA that Mississippians are inherently creative thinkers and doers, which is exactly what this whole campaign is about.

“These stories need to be told because Mississippians don’t tell it — have never told it themselves to the outside world. And also, I think it’s really nice for them to share it, to know that you are not the only person. It’s hard when you’re on your own, doing your own thing, striving forward and daring to differ, and it’s really just fantastic to know that you are part of something. It’s inspirational telling the world what is really happening in Mississippi and Brookhaven.”