Jackson Free Press

This year's final monthly installment of "Unburied Treasures: Cover to Cover" is Dec. 17 at the Mississippi Museum of Art. December's feature will include the work of Charles Hutson (1840-1936), a Southern renaissance man turned artist who depicted an eclectic range of Deep South landscapes in a career that began in his later years in New Orleans. Alongside Hutson's work will be a discussion on "A Unique Slant of Light: The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana" (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2012), and Jamie Weems and Johnny Rawls will play early 20th-century banjo and mandolin music.

"Unburied Treasures" is a series of lectures featuring art, music, books and film, usually from the museum's collection of artwork (hence the name "cover to cover"). For each program, the museum selects a piece of work from the permanent collection, a speaker and a book that relates to the artwork.

The Dec. 17 guest speaker is Michael Sartisky, the director of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities and one of the editors of "A Unique Slant of Light," a collection of artists' biographies and artwork collected from Louisiana over the past two centuries.

"It's a beautiful, gorgeous book," says Beth Batton, the curator of the museum's permanent collection. "It really gives you a wide variety of artists from the 19th century all the way to contemporary Louisiana, giving you a feel for the scope of this state's art over the past 200 years."

A cash bar opens at 5:30 p.m., and the program starts at 6 p.m. This event is free and funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities through the Mississippi Humanities Council. For more information, call the Mississippi Museum of Art (380 S. Lamar St.) at 601-960-1515.