Family Fun at the Frist!

Located in the heart of downtown Nashville, the Frist is a world-class art museum presenting an ever-changing schedule of exhibitions and offering something for everyone—from toddlers to teens and grown-ups too.

Families especially love the award-winning Martin ArtQuest, a hands-on creative space filled with interactive art-making stations where you can make your own masterpieces.

The Impressionist Revolution: Monet to Matisse from the Dallas Museum of Art explores the fascinating story of impressionism, from its birth in 1874 to its legacy in the early twentieth century. Through nearly fifty paintings and sculptures, this exhibition reveals the rebellious origins of the independent artist collective known as the impressionists and the revolutionary course they charted for modern art. Breaking with tradition in both how and what they painted, the impressionists redefined what constituted cutting-edge contemporary art. The unique innovations of its core members, such as Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, and Berthe Morisot, set the foundation for generations of avant-garde artists that followed, from Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh to Piet Mondrian and Henri Matisse. Learn more.

Drawn from Tate’s collection in England, International Surrealism from Tate: Fifty Years of Dreams focuses on the long trajectory and broad international reach of surrealism as a state of mind through a captivating selection of paintings, photographs, sculptures, and other art objects, as well as publications and archival material.

Featuring familiar artists such as Jean Arp, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, René Magritte, Joan Miró, Yves Tanguy, and Dorothea Tanning, the exhibition also includes others whose work deserves to be better known such as Kati Horna, Malangatana Ngwenya, Shiihara Osamu, and Lionel Wendt. As surrealism was made up of individual responses rather than a specific style, the key themes that united their various practices form the structure of the exhibition. Learn more.

One of the most highly sought-after artists working in the United States today, Anila Quayyum Agha is renowned for immersive installations that combine color, geometry, pattern, and, above all, light to elicit wonder and a sense of endless possibility. This exhibition—a nationally touring mid-career retrospective for which the Frist Art Museum is the final venue—traces the past two decades of Agha’s work. Encompassing intimately scaled beaded and embroidered drawings as well as her better-known monumental light installations, the exhibition shows the artist’s expansive creativity and the centrality of textiles to her practice.  Learn more.