2019 Frist Art Museum Exhibition Schedule Features French and British Masterpieces from the Mellon Collection; Photography by Dorothea Lange; Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism from the Gelman Collection; A Survey of Surrealism; Native Women Artists; Eric Carle; and More
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (August 15, 2018)—The Frist Art Museum is proud to announce its 2019 schedule of exhibitions.
In the Ingram Gallery, the year begins with the companion shows Van Gogh, Monet, Degas, and Their Times: The Mellon Collection of French Art from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and A Sporting Vision: The Paul Mellon Collection of British Sporting Art from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, both intriguing looks into the Mellons’ remarkable collecting strategies. Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism from the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection will showcase celebrated works from one of the most significant private holdings of twentieth-century Mexican art. Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists is the first comprehensive exhibition exclusively devoted to Native women artists from North America.
In the Upper-Level Galleries, Dorothea Lange: Politics of Seeing examines the photographer’s work through the lens of social and political activism, presenting arresting images from the Great Depression, Japanese internment camps, and other work through the 1950s. Monsters & Myths: Surrealism and War in the 1930s and 1940s features works by Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, René Magritte, Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Dorothea Tanning and more, and explores the powerful and unsettling images created in response to the threat of war and Fascist rule. Eric Carle’s Picture Books: Celebrating 50 Years of “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” presents nearly 100 original artworks, spanning five decades of the beloved illustrator’s picture-book career.
In the Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery, the Frist presents Claudio Parmiggiani: Dematerialization, the first museum exhibition in the United States by the revered Italian artist. The Brazilian artist duo OSGEMEOS—identical twin brothers Gustavo and Otavio Pandolfo—will transform the gallery into a vibrant, immersive installation. The year will conclude with an exhibition of new sculptures by New York-based artist Diana Al-Hadid.
In the Conte Community Arts Gallery, the Frist presents the community-focused exhibitions Young Tennessee Artists; Connect/Disconnect: Growth in the “It” City; and Nashville Walls.
The Frist Art Museum’s 2019 Schedule of Exhibitions
(Dates subject to change)
Van Gogh, Monet, Degas, and Their Times: The Mellon Collection of French Art from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
February 1–May 5, 2019 ~ Ingram Gallery
Offering more than seventy works by masters such as Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Henri Rousseau, and Vincent van Gogh, this exhibition celebrates Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon’s extraordinary gift of French 19th- and early 20th-century art to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. With its core of Impressionist paintings, the collection also comprises masterpieces from every important school of French art—from Romanticism through the School of Paris. These works represent more than 150 years of French art and exemplify the Mellons’ personal vision and highly original collecting strategies, which provide a context for understanding this unique collection of French art.
Organized by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
A Sporting Vision: The Paul Mellon Collection of British Sporting Art from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
February 1–May 5, 2019 ~ Ingram Gallery
With representative masterpieces of the genre—including works by Sir Francis Grant, John Frederick Herring, Benjamin Marshall, George Morland, and George Stubbs—this exhibition celebrates Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon’s gift of British sporting art to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and marks an opportunity to view the entire breadth of this outstanding and comprehensive collection. It also proposes a fresh look at sporting art within wider social and artistic contexts, including the scientific and industrial revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries, the transformation of the British countryside, the evolutionary history of the horse and other animals, and society’s changing habits and customs.
Organized by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Claudio Parmiggiani: Dematerialization
February 1–May 5, 2019 ~ Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery
Italian artist Claudio Parmiggiani (b. 1943) resists classification. Though associated with the Arte Povera movement and conceptualism of the 1960s and ’70s, he works somewhere in between. His art evokes universal themes of time, absence, memory, and silence while drawing on classical references as well as the subtle quietude of paintings by Giorgio Morandi. Parmiggiani’s signature process of “Delocazione” (displacement) was originally inspired by the silhouettes of dust left behind after objects were removed. For more than forty years, Parmiggiani has created his own version of this effect by stoking the flames from controlled combustions, filling rooms with smoke and capturing the outlines of objects in the resulting soot. Mirroring the technical process of photograms, these haunting images record the paradoxical presence of objects now absent. This will be the artist’s first museum exhibition in the United States.
Organized by the Frist Art Museum
Dorothea Lange: Politics of Seeing
March 15–May 27, 2019 ~ Upper-Level Galleries
Dorothea Lange (1895–1965) is recognized as one of the most important photographers of the twentieth century, and her insightful and compassionate work has exerted a profound influence on the development of modern documentary photography. With hardship and human suffering as a consistent theme throughout her career, Lange created arresting portraits with the aim of sparking reform. This is the first exhibition to examine her work through the lens of social and political activism, presenting iconic photographs from the Great Depression, the grim conditions of incarcerated Japanese Americans during World War II, and inequity in our judicial system in the 1950s. The exhibition encompasses 300 objects, including 130 vintage and modern photographs, proof sheets, letters, a video, and other personal memorabilia.
Organized by the Oakland Museum of California
Dorothea Lange: Politics of Seeing is supported in part by the Oakland Museum Women’s Board, the Henry Luce Foundation, the Susie Tompkins Buell Fund, Ann Hatch and Paul Discoe, the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, and Peter Rossi/Stifel, Nicolaus & Co.
Connect/Disconnect: Growth in the “It” City
March 22–August 4, 2019 ~ Conte Community Arts Gallery
Inspired by a 2017 Tennessean article about how Nashville has been growing at a rate of one hundred people per day, Connect/Disconnect is a community exhibition that will feature photographs by Davidson County residents of diverse ages and backgrounds, showing how the population boom has affected them and the lives of the people around them. The exhibition seeks to explore the rising connectivity between neighborhoods and communities, and the potential for disconnection between people and socioeconomic classes as Nashville adapts to record growth. Its themes may include the new atmosphere of entrepreneurship and creativity, the impact of transit and housing on current and new residents, and the ongoing effects of recent and historical events.
Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism from the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection
May 24–September 2, 2019 ~ Ingram Gallery
With iconic works by Frida Kahlo, her husband Diego Rivera, and their contemporaries, including David Alfaro Siquieros, Rufino Tamayo, and Ángel Zárraga, this exhibition allows visitors to explore the Gelman Collection, one of the most significant private holdings of twentieth-century Mexican art. The husband-and-wife collectors Jacques and Natasha Gelman were glamorous and wealthy Eastern European refugees who married in 1941, took part in Mexico City’s vibrant art scene, and purchased art mostly from their artist friends. In this exhibition of more than 100 works are self-portraits by Kahlo, Rivera’s Calla Lily Vendor, and numerous portraits of the Gelmans, plus intimate photographs that give insight into Kahlo and Rivera’s lifestyle.
Organized by The Vergel Foundation and MondoMostre
OSGEMEOS (title TBD)
May 24–September 2, 2019 ~ Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery
The Brazilian artist duo OSGEMEOS—identical twin brothers Gustavo and Otavio Pandolfo—is internationally celebrated for their vibrant and playful street art, public murals, and studio work. Through painting and sculpture, OSGEMEOS (the artists’ nom de plume; Portuguese for “the twins”) creates immersive spaces that blend wide-ranging influences, from folkloric and contemporary elements of Brazilian culture to graffiti, hip-hop, and international youth culture. Born in 1974 in São Paulo, OSGEMEOS progressed from clandestine street art to commissioned outdoor murals and art gallery exhibitions. Using a shared visual language, the twins often populate their works with a cast of long-limbed yellow figures with bold outlines, enlarged faces, and simplified features, telling stories of fantasy, family, social change, and how tradition and progress coexist in Brazil.
Organized by the Frist Art Museum
Monsters & Myths: Surrealism and War in the 1930s and 1940s
June 21–September 29, 2019 ~ Upper-Level Galleries
Featuring works by Salvador Dalí, Luis Buñuel, Max Ernst, René Magritte, Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Dorothea Tanning, and others, this exhibition explores the Surrealists’ portrayals of monsters, fragmented bodies, and other depictions of the grotesque as metaphors for the destabilizing consequences of war and psychological fears and fantasies of unbridled power. Through 79 objects, including paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, and periodicals drawn primarily from the collections of The Baltimore Museum of Art and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Monsters & Myths highlights the brilliance and fertility of this period, which arose in response to Hitler’s rise to power, the Spanish Civil War, and World War II—events that profoundly challenged the revolutionary hopes that had guided most Surrealist artists in the 1920s. The powerfully disturbing images produced during this period were an effort to engage with psychological forces that propelled history, and the exhibition may inspire comparisons between the turmoil of the 1930s and 1940s and the political instability of today.
Organized by the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art
Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists
September 27, 2019–January 12, 2020 ~ Ingram Gallery
This is the first major museum exhibition exclusively devoted to Native women artists from all over the United States and Canada, ranging across time and media. Developed in close cooperation with leading Native artists and historians, the exhibition offers multiple perspectives to enhance understanding of Native art practices. The approximately 115 objects, including textiles, baskets, jewelry, painting, sculpture, photography, video, and digital art, are organized into sections that reflect why Native women create art. Hearts of Our People not only helps visitors understand the traditional role of Native women artists in serving the cultural, economic, diplomatic, and domestic needs of their communities, but also goes beyond the longstanding convention of treating these artworks as unattributed representations of entire cultures. The contemporary works on view, in particular, highlight the intentionality of the individual artist and demonstrate how the artist has been influenced by the preceding generations. The exhibition will be accompanied by interactive interpretive “ArtStories” in multiple media, and a scholarly catalogue.
Organized by the Minneapolis Institute of Art
This exhibition has been made possible in part by a major grant from the Henry Luce Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor.
Diana Al-Hadid (title TBA)
September 27, 2019–January 12, 2020 ~ Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery
This exhibition features a selection of sculptures and wall reliefs by the Syrian-born artist Diana Al-Hadid, who currently works in Brooklyn. Meditations on ruination and renewal, her works contain allusions ranging from archaeological excavations and sacred frescoes, mosaics, or tapestries to female bodies, often appearing as if melting or dissolving. These shimmering orchestrations of abstract elements, evocative surfaces, and symbolic forms—made from materials such as polymer gypsum, fiberglass, and cardboard—seem to have grown organically, as much the product of time’s accumulation and decay as of the artist’s imagination. Yet her process of fabrication, deep content, and spirit of inquiry reveal a highly purposeful vision, inspired by a variety of sources, from Arabic literature to depictions of women throughout art history.
Organized by the Frist Art Museum
Eric Carle’s Picture Books: Celebrating 50 Years of “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”
October 18, 2019–February 23, 2020 ~ Upper-Level Galleries
Eric Carle (b. 1929) is one of the most acclaimed and beloved illustrators of our time. The creator of more than 70 books, Carle combines winsome stories and exuberant collages that appeal to young readers and adults alike. Eric Carle’s Picture Books: Celebrating 50 Years of “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” explores the artist’s personal history and interests, varied subjects, materials, and artistic techniques. The exhibition presents nearly 100 original artworks spanning five decades of Carle’s picture-book career. On view are illustrations ranging from Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, his 1967 collaboration with Bill Martin, Jr., to The Nonsense Show, his playful ode to Surrealism published in 2015. Between these milestones, twenty-two familiar titles are represented with a special section devoted to the golden anniversary of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Eric Carle’s Picture Books: Celebrating 50 Years of “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” was organized by The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, Amherst, Massachusetts.
Nashville Walls
August 2019–January 2020 (exact dates TBA) ~ Conte Community Arts Gallery
In recent years, as the Nashville area rapidly grows and changes, a vibrant street art community has flourished. New murals can now be seen across the city, including on a silo in The Nations, walls in North Nashville, and buildings along Nolensville Road, the Gulch, 12 South, and many other neighborhoods. Nashville Walls celebrates this emergence and will feature site-specific murals created by several local artists, as well as a collaborative community mural that the public will be invited to participate in making. Nashville Walls explores what role the arts play in urban redevelopment and in the expression of neighborhood and individual identities, further testifying that art can be found all around us, not just inside museums and galleries.
Organized by the Frist Art Museum
Sponsor Acknowledgment
The Frist Art Museum is supported in part by the Metro Nashville Arts Commission, the Tennessee Arts Commission, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Image Credits
1.Van Gogh, Monet, Degas, and Their Times: The Mellon Collection of French Art from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Claude Monet. Field of Poppies, Giverny, 1885. Oil on canvas, 23 5/8 x 28 3/4 in. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 85.499. © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Photo: Katherine Wetzel
2. Eric Carle’s Picture Books: Celebrating 50 Years of “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”
Eric Carle. Illustration for The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Philomel Books). Collection of Eric and Barbara Carle. © 1969, 1987 Eric Carle
3. Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism from the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection
Frida Kahlo. Self-Portrait with Monkeys, 1943. Oil on canvas, 32 1/8 x 24 3/4 in. The Vergel Foundation
4. Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists
Jamie Okuma, Luiseno/Shoshone-Bannock. Adaptation II, 2012. Shoes designed by Christian Louboutin. Leather, glass beads, porcupine quills, sterling silver cones, brass sequins, chicken feathers, cloth, deer rawhide, and buckskin. Minneapolis Institute of Art, Bequest of Virginia Doneghy, by exchange, 2012.68.1A,B. © 2012 Jamie Okuma
5. Monsters & Myths: Surrealism and War in the 1930s and 1940s
André Masson. There Is No Finished World, 1942. Oil on canvas, 53 x 68 in. The Baltimore Museum of Art: Bequest of Saidie A. May, BMA 1951.333
6. Dorothea Lange: Politics of Seeing
Dorothea Lange. Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California, 1936. Gelatin silver print. © The Dorothea Lange Collection, the Oakland Museum of California, City of Oakland. Gift of Paul S. Taylor
FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION Buddy Kite: 615.744.3351, bkite@FristArtMuseum.org Ellen Jones Pryor: 615.243.1311, epryor@FristArtMuseum.org
About the Frist Art Museum Accredited by the American Alliance of Museums, the Frist Art Museum is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit art exhibition center dedicated to presenting and originating high-quality exhibitions with related educational programs and community outreach activities. Located at 919 Broadway in downtown Nashville, Tenn., the Frist Art Museum offers the finest visual art from local, regional, national, and international sources in exhibitions that inspire people through art to look at their world in new ways. The Frist Art Museum’s Martin ArtQuest Gallery features interactive stations relating to Frist Art Museum exhibitions. Information on accessibility can be found at FristArtMuseum.org/accessibility. Gallery admission is free for visitors 18 and younger and for members; $12 for adults; $9 for seniors and college students with ID; and $7 for active military. College students are admitted free Thursday and Friday evenings (with the exception of Frist Fridays), 5:00–9:00 p.m. Groups of 10 or more can receive discounts with advance reservations by calling 615.744.3247. The galleries, café, and gift shop are open seven days a week: Mondays through Wednesdays, and Saturdays, 10:00 a.m.–5:30 p.m.; Thursdays and Fridays, 10:00 a.m.–9:00 p.m.; and Sundays, 1:00– 5:30 p.m., with the café opening at noon. For additional information, call 615.244.3340 or visit FristArtMuseum.org.
