Picasso. Figures
February 5–May 9, 2021
Picasso. Figures, an exhibition from the incomparable collection of the Musée national Picasso-Paris, offered an in-depth look at Pablo Picasso’s career-long fascination with the human figure as a means of expressing a range of subjects and emotions. Featuring approximately seventy-five paintings, works on paper, and sculptures, Picasso. Figures made its sole US appearance in Nashville in the Frist’s Ingram Gallery from February 5 through May 2, 2021. Highlights of the exhibition included masterpieces from Picasso’s various styles and periods, as well as more intimate works that provide fresh insights into his innovative practice.
Picasso. Figures is organized in collaboration with the Musée national Picasso-Paris. It was conceived and organized by Emilia Philippot, curator, and François Dareau, associate curator, Musée national Picasso-Paris.
Kara Walker: Cut to the Quick
July 23–October 10, 2021
A leading artist of her generation, Kara Walker (b. 1969) works in a range of mediums, including prints, drawings, paintings, sculpture, film, and the large-scale silhouette cutouts for which she is perhaps most recognized. Her powerful and provocative images employ contradictions to critique the painful legacies of slavery, sexism, violence, imperialism, and other power structures, including those in the history and hierarchies of art and contemporary culture. This exhibition offered a broad overview of her career through more than 80 works from the collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation, premier collectors of works on paper in the United States. Some highlights of the exhibition were the complete Emancipation Approximation series and images from the Porgy & Bess series. Walker’s process involves extensive research in history, literature, art history, and popular culture. Intentionally unsentimental and ambiguous, the works can be disturbing while also utilizing satire and humor, always exploring the irreconcilable inconsistencies that mirror the human condition. This was Walker’s first solo exhibition at the Frist Art Museum; her work Camptown Ladies appeared in our presentation of 30 Americans in 2013–14.
Co-curated by Susan H. Edwards and Ciona Rouse
American Art Deco: Designing for the People, 1918-1939
October 8, 2021–January 2, 2022
Appropriately presented within the Frist’s own art deco interior during the museum’s twentieth-anniversary year, this exhibition offered an overview of an international style that manifested stateside in decorative arts, fine arts, architecture, and design during the 1920s and 1930s. Featuring approximately 140 objects, American Art Deco explored the movement between 1918 and 1939 and highlighted not only the glamour and optimism of the 1920s but also the impact of the Great Depression in the 1930s. An array of works, from a stunning 1925 René Lalique glass vase to a 1930 Ford Model A, immersed guests in this period of much social, political, and cultural change.
Organized by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, and Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska
Medieval Bologna: Art for a University City
November 5, 2021–January 30, 2022
This was the first museum exhibition in the United States to focus on medieval art made in the northern Italian city of Bologna. Home to the oldest university in Europe, Bologna fostered a unique artistic culture at the end of the Middle Ages. The nearly seventy objects in the exhibition spanned from 1200 to 1400, from the first great flowering of manuscript illumination in Bologna to the beginnings of the construction and decoration of the ambitious Basilica of San Petronio in the city’s Piazza Maggiore. Paintings and sculptures as well as manuscripts were on view. Lenders included the J. Paul Getty Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Morgan Library & Museum, and the National Gallery of Art.
Organized by the Frist Art Museum
Photography by John Schweikert
