NASHVILLE, Tenn. (July 10, 2014)—The Frist Center for the Visual Arts’ 2015 lineup of exhibitions will bring treasures from around the world spanning the eighth century to the present to Nashville. The Ingram Gallery will undergo multiple transformations to showcase Houghton Hall: Portrait of an English Country House, an exquisite collection of paintings, sculptures and decorative arts from Sir Robert Walpole’s 18th-century Norfolk home; Italian Style: Fashion Since 1945, a comprehensive look at the Italian fashion industry from the end of World War II to today; and Ink, Silk, and Gold: Islamic Art from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which features Islamic art ranging from the eighth to the 21st centuries and from Spain to Indonesia.
The Upper-Level Galleries will feature Telling Tales: Stories and Legends in 19th-Century American Art, a remarkable selection of paintings and sculptures from the New-York Historical Society; Postcards of the Wiener Werkstätte: Selections from the Leonard A. Lauder Collection, works reflecting the rich social fabric of turn-of-the-century Vienna by an artists’ cooperative founded by members of the larger Vienna Secession movement; and Phantom Bodies: The Human Aura in Art, the latest in a series of Frist Center exhibitions on the subject of the human body in contemporary art.
In the Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery, the Frist Center will present photographic portraits of contemporary European aristocrats by American photographer Tina Barney; and Spanish artist Jaume Plensa’s sculptures, including a monumental outdoor sculpture on display at the Frist Center’s Demonbreun Street entrance.
The Frist Center’s schedule of exhibitions in 2015 in order of opening*:
Tina Barney: The Europeans
January 19–May 10, 2015
Ingram Gallery
Tina Barney: The Europeans presents a selection of 21 sumptuous photographs from the artist’s larger body of work by the same name. With an eye for detail, composition and color, American photographer Tina Barney creates images renowned for their seductive beauty and poignant insight. Between 1996 and 2004, Barney traveled to Austria, England, Italy, Spain, France and Germany with a large format camera, lights and assistants. With the help of friends and curators who provided introductions and her own natural instinct for propriety, Barney gained access to the inner circle of the Old World elite. She worked quickly and closely with her subjects devising scenes and relationships, colors and patterns that lead the eye through the image while engendering narratives both melancholic and endearing.
Tina Barney: The Europeans was organized by the Frist Center for the Visual Arts.
Houghton Hall: Portrait of an English Country House
February 13–May 10, 2015
Ingram Gallery
This exhibition showcases the renowned collection of paintings, furniture, porcelain, silver, costumes and other decorative arts from Houghton Hall, one of England’s finest country estates. Located in Norfolk, one hundred miles northeast of London, Houghton Hall was built in the early 1700s by Sir Robert Walpole, England’s first Prime Minister. More than 150 exquisite objects will be presented in vignettes with large-scale photo murals to evoke the luxurious interior of the house, from its intimately scaled library to the grand public spaces of its Marble Parlour—with a fully set dining table—and its remarkably proportioned Stone Hall and Saloon. Specific highlights include furniture by William Kent, Sèvres porcelain and Garrard silver, as well as family portraits by William Hogarth, Joshua Reynolds and John Singer Sargent. Seen together, the collection demonstrates the rarified taste and access to great makers which such aristocrats had. Assembled by eight generations of descendants of Sir Robert Walpole, including the current Marquess of Cholmondeley, this collection comprises a fascinating chronicle of English history and offers a rare glimpse into the private interior of one of Britain’s grandest country houses.
This exhibition was organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in collaboration with Houghton Hall. An indemnity has been granted by the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
Telling Tales: Stories and Legends in 19th-Century American Art
February 27–June 7, 2015
Upper-Level Galleries
Telling Tales assembles paintings and sculptures from the collection of the New-York Historical Society that recount stories relating to American cultural aspirations and everyday life in the early to mid-nineteenth century. The sections, including the thematic groupings History Painting; Scenes of Everyday Life; and Beauty and Spirituality, convey the narrative content that was deemed an essential component of a work of art according to aesthetic standards that prevailed before the Civil War. Among the many treasures of this exhibition are paintings by Thomas Cole and Asher Brown Durand of the Hudson River School and sculptures by John Rogers.
Telling Tales: Stories and Legends in 19th-Century American Art has been organized by the New-York Historical Society.
Italian Style: Fashion Since 1945
June 5–September 7, 2015
Ingram Gallery
Italian Style: Fashion Since 1945 chronicles the birth and growth of the Italian fashion industry from the post-World War II recovery years to the present day. Based on new archival research, this elegant and comprehensive exhibition explores the development of both womens-and menswear and highlights key designers and the outstanding techniques, materials and expertise for which Italy has become renowned. Propelling Italian fashion onto the world stage with a parade of luxury, the landmark Sala Bianca catwalk shows held in Florence in the 1950s stand out as one of the dramatic peaks of this narrative. Italian Style displays more than 90 garments and accessories by leading Italian fashion houses, including Armani, Dolce & Gabbana, Gucci, Missoni, Prada, Pucci, Valentino and Versace, through to the next generation of talent, including couture by Giambattista Valli, bold ready-to-wear from Fausto Puglisi and work from Valentino’s new designer duo Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli.
Italian Style: Fashion Since 1945 is organized by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Presenting Sponsor: Nordstrom
Jaume Plensa: Human Landscape
June 5–September 7, 2015
Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery
This exhibition is composed of three large-scale works, exemplifying different aspects of Jaume Plensa’s oeuvre. Plensa creates figurative sculptures from such materials as steel, bronze, alabaster and synthetic resin. His idealized faces and figures reflect timeless philosophical queries about the nature of spirituality and the role of the individual in shaping culture and coexisting with nature. The works on display have a luminous beauty and gracefulness that evince a classical sense of harmony and supreme calm. In addition to the three large-scale works, one monumental sculpture will be on view outside the Frist Center, at the Demonbreun Street entrance. The exhibition will occur concurrently with a large exhibition of Plensa’s works at Cheekwood Botanical Garden & Museum of Art in Nashville.
Jaume Plensa: Human Landscape was organized by the Frist Center for the Visual Arts.
Postcards of the Wiener Werkstätte: Selections from the Leonard A. Lauder Collection
With additional works from the collection of The Wolfsonian–Florida International University, Miami Beach, Florida
June 26–October 5, 2015
Upper-Level Galleries
From 1903 to 1932 the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshop), a cooperative for artists and artisans founded by members of the larger Vienna Secession movement, produced postcards, textiles, jewelry, ceramics and other high-quality wares, with the goal of designing every aspect of daily life to create a “total work of art” (or, in German, Gesamtkunstwerk). Postcards, made by designers such as Josef Hoffmann, Oskar Kokoschka, Dagobert Peche and Egon Schiele, were an important element in the overall program of the Wiener Werkstätte, and the renowned Leonard A. Lauder Collection, a promised gift to Neue Galerie New York, contains more than 300 examples. Some of the more exceptional designs were produced by women artists, including Mela Koehler and Maria Likarz. The variety of thematic cards reflect the rich social fabric of turn-of-the-century Vienna—its cafés, architecture, and fashion. The postcards in the exhibition will be complemented with objects loaned from the Wolfsonian–Florida International University, Miami Beach, such as textiles, decorative arts and printed materials.
Postcards of the Wiener Werkstätte: Selections from the Leonard A. Lauder Collection is organized by Neue Galerie New York with additional loans from The Wolfsonian–Florida International University, Miami Beach, Florida.
Ink, Silk, and Gold: Islamic Art from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
October 9, 2015–January 10, 2016
Ingram Gallery
Ink, Silk, and Gold presents nearly one hundred works of Islamic art, spanning the eighth to the twenty-first centuries, from the impressive collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. This exhibition offers a chronological and regional story of the dynamic and complex artistic traditions originating from across the vast expanse of the Islamic world—Spain to Indonesia—and represents almost all forms of media, including silver inlaid metalwork, Qur’an pages inscribed with gold, brocaded velvets and luster-painted ceramics. More than 130 years after the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, began collecting Islamic art, this exhibition marks the first time these objects have been comprehensively studied, restored and presented to the public.
Ink, Silk, and Gold: Islamic Art from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston was organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Platinum Sponsor: HCA Foundation on behalf of HCA and TriStar Health
Silver Sponsor: Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Arts
Shinique Smith: Wonder and Rainbows
October 9, 2015–January 10, 2016
Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery
For the past decade, New York–based artist Shinique Smith has created highly expressive paintings, sculptures, and installations that reflect influences as diverse as dance, Eastern spirituality, fashion, Abstract Expressionism, childhood wonder, and poetry. Many of her collaged works contain recycled or reused objects, demonstrating her belief that personal possessions can inspire memories and shape our experience and identity. Yet such materials, particularly her bundles of cast-off clothing, also comment on the vast excess and waste in American consumerist society. The artist’s early years as a graffiti artist in Baltimore remain evident in her exuberant calligraphic strokes, which she often intermingles with worn materials from popular culture.
This exhibition will feature a new site-specific mural that may be a combination of painting, sculpture and projected light. A highlight of the exhibition will be a multi-paneled wall piece composed of rainbow-like fields of color. Although initially inspired by the minimalist artist Ellsworth Kelly, it is meant to represent a spectrum of both color and emotion in a manner similar to the theories espoused by Wassily Kandinsky in his treatise Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1912). Like Kandinsky, Smith believes that each color can have a particular psychological impact and can reflect an individual’s inner state. The other galleries will contain roughly ten paintings—assemblages of such items as a fuzzy pink boa, a feathered arrow, and a reflective hubcap intertwined with the artist’s energetic brushwork—and four hanging sculptures composed of bundled fabrics.
Phantom Bodies: The Human Aura in Art
October 30, 2015–February 14, 2016
Upper-Level Galleries
The third in a series of exhibitions about the human body in contemporary art organized by Frist Center Chief Curator Mark Scala, Phantom Bodies includes provocative artworks that address themes of trauma and loss, but also affirm the enduring force of the human spirit by conveying material traces, shadow and light, or the sublimation of the body into other forms of matter and energy. The exhibition title alludes to the phantom limb syndrome, a palpable sensation that embodies the pain of loss or the illusion of restoration and wholeness. The phantom limb here represents absent persons whose vestiges trigger memories, while positing a passage from the body through the mind and soul. The international array of artists in the exhibition includes Magdalena Abakanowicz, Barry X Ball, Ross Bleckner, Christian Boltanski, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Ken Gonzales-Day, Adam Fuss, Alicia Henry, Damien Hirst, Shirazeh Houshiary, Anish Kapoor, Elizabeth King, Deborah Luster, Sally Mann, Teresa Margolles, Ana Mendieta, Shirin Neshat, Hermann Nitsch, Gerhard Richter, Doris Salcedo, Annelies Štrba and Bill Viola.
Phantom Bodies: The Human Aura in Art was organized by the Frist Center for the Visual Arts.
The exhibition is funded in part by a grant from the Dedalus Foundation, Inc., and the National Endowment for the Arts.
This exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with an introduction by Chief Curator Mark Scala and essays by art historians Martha Buskirk, Eleanor Heartney and Lisa Saltzman.
Michelangelo: Sacred and Profane, Masterpiece Drawings from the Casa Buonarroti
October 30, 2015–January 6, 2016
Ingram Gallery
Michelangelo: Sacred and Profane, Masterpiece Drawings from the Casa Buonarroti offers an intimate view into the hand and mind of Michelangelo Buonarroti, one of the greatest masters in the history of Western art. A careful selection of drawings attest to the versatile artist’s activities as a sculptor, painter, poet, architect, and military engineer. Exhibition highlights include a large and deeply moving Madonna and Child and several studies related to Michelangelo’s ambitious but unrealized project for the façade of San Lorenzo in Florence, the Medici family burial church. The works, which range from rapid sketches to presentation drawings, all come from the Casa Buonarroti, Michelangelo’s family home in Florence, Italy.
Michelangelo: Sacred and Profane, Masterpiece Drawings from the Casa Buonarroti”
Ellen Jones Pryor: 615.243.1311, ”
About the Frist Center
Accredited by the American Alliance of Museums, the Frist Center for the Visual Arts 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 Center offers the finest visual art from local, regional, national, and international sources in a program of changing exhibitions that inspire people through art to look at their world in new ways. The Frist Center’s Martin ArtQuest Gallery features interactive stations relating to Frist Center exhibitions. Information on accessibility may be found at fristcenter.org/accessibility. Gallery admission is free for visitors 18 and younger and to 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. Discounts are offered for groups of 10 or more with advance reservation 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. Additional information is available by calling 615.244.3340 or by visiting fristcenter.org.
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