WHAT: The debut of three large new mural works by artist Tay Butler installed on the MNPS Visual and Performing Arts Building in William Edmondson Park and the Edgehill Branch Library. Butler, one of the artists featured in the Frist Art Museum’s landmark 2023 exhibition Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage, worked with student participants in the Edgehill United Methodist Church’s Brighter Days After School Tutoring program to create digital collage murals featuring members of the Edgehill community.
WHEN: Friday, October 3 at 4:00 p.m.
WHERE: 1450 14th Ave South. Street parking available.
PROGRAM:
4:00 p.m. Welcome and introduction by Franklin Willis, director of visual and performing arts, Metro Nashville Public Schools and Katie Delmez, senior curator, Frist Art Museum.
4:15 p.m.: Remarks about the Edgehill Brighter Days Students by photographer DaShawn Lewis and Ms. Nancy Crutcher
4:20 p.m.: Remarks by Tay Butler
4:25 p.m.: Refreshments and open viewing of the murals.
Saturday, October 4 at 10:30 a.m.: Community conversation with Tay Butler at the Edgehill Branch Library
ATTENDEES: Edgehill Brighter Days students and mural subjects, Tay Butler, DaShawn Lewis, community leaders, and more.
ABOUT EDGEHILL BRIGHTER DAYS: Since 1968, Edgehill United Methodist Church has served families living in the Edgehill neighborhood through its neighborhood ministries, including the Brighter Days After School Tutoring program. On select weekday afternoons, students receive transportation, one-on-one tutoring, a nutritious meal from the Nashville Food Project, outdoor recreation time, and volunteer support.
ABOUT TAY BUTLER: Tay Butler is a multidisciplinary visual artist based in Houston, Texas. He received his BFA in photography and digital media from the University of Houston and completed his photography MFA at the University of Arkansas. After retiring from the US Army and abandoning a middle-class engineering career to search for purpose, Butler reignited a rich appreciation for Black history and a deep obsession with the Black archive. Through collage, photography, drawing, video, sound, performance, and large-scale installation, Butler utilizes past histories and imagery to create new understandings of the present while imagining a brighter future.
Butler’s solo exhibitions and installations include A Friendly Game of Basketball, Lawndale Art Center, Houston; The Triangle, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; RE.Migrant I & II, Project Row Houses, Houston; and We Are Still Searching, Louise J. Moran Fine Arts Courtyard, Houston. His work has been featured in group showings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; ArtPace, San Antonio; and the landmark exhibition Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage at the Frist Art Museum, Nashville. Butler has collaborated with the Houston Rockets, Coca-Cola, and many others. His awards include the Individual Artist Fellowship from the Arkansas Arts Council, the Idea Fund grant from Diverse Works, and First Prize in the 2019 Citywide African American Artists Exhibition at TSU. He currently teaches art and design at San Jacinto College and has also led over 70 public and private workshops for institutions ranging from Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, to the Center for Fine Art Photography, Fort Collins.
ABOUT MULTIPLICITY: BLACKNESS IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN COLLAGE: The first major museum exhibition devoted to the rich yet understudied subject of Black American artists working in collage, Multiplicity featured approximately 80 collage and collage-informed works that explored the breadth and complexity of Black identity and experiences in the United States. Conceived and organized by Frist Art Museum Senior Curator Katie Delmez, the exhibition was on view in Nashville in the fall of 2023 before traveling to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and The Phillips Collection.
Featuring an intergenerational group of 52 living artists, Multiplicity explored the varying ways collage is employed and how the technique can suggest diverse conceptual concerns such as cultural hybridity, notions of beauty, gender fluidity, and historical memory. By assembling pieces of paper, photographs, fabric, and salvaged or repurposed materials, these artists create unified compositions that express the endless possibilities of Black-constructed narratives.
As part of an effort to extend the exhibition’s impact beyond the gallery walls into the Nashville community, the Frist worked with several exhibition artists on projects and public artworks including installations at HBCU campuses, galleries, and public events.
Supporter Acknowledgment
This project is supported by HCA Healthcare/TriStar Health, the Henry Luce Foundation, Drs. Turner and Phylanice Nashe, the Nissan Foundation, and Ameriprise Financial.
The Frist Art Museum is supported in part by The Frist Foundation, Metro Arts, and the Tennessee Arts Commission, which receives funding in part from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Connect with us @FristArtMuseum #TheFrist
FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Frist Art Museum
Buddy Kite: 615.744.3351; bkite@FristArtMuseum.org
Ellen Jones Pryor: 615.243.1311; epryor@FristArtMuseum.org
Metro Nashville Public Schools
Michael Cass: 615.481.9186; Michael.Cass@mnps.org
