Jordan Ann Craig: Sharp Tongue 

Production | Exhibition Grant

Sharp Tongue, Jordan Ann Craig’s commissioned mural for the Memphis Art Museum’s Rooftop Art Garden is a site-specific public artwork integrating contemporary Indigenous abstraction with the ecological and historical context of the Mississippi River bluff. Craig’s first outdoor public work and largest to date, the mural translates Northern Cheyenne beadwork and design systems into a monumental architectural surface that responds to light, movement, and landscape. Freely accessible and embedded within MAM’s new riverfront campus, the work advances artistic innovation, thought leadership, and public engagement by foregrounding Indigenous presence, interconnection, and place-based practice in a highly visible civic setting.

Installed on a 900-square-foot architectural wall within the Rooftop Art Garden, the mural will remain on view for five years, anchoring an “art park in the sky” that offers panoramic views of the Mississippi River, the Memphis skyline, and a newly created public pathway. The work is designed in direct response to this setting—where architecture, river ecology, and public movement converge—positioning the mural as both a visual landmark and a conceptual meditation on place, continuity, and belonging.