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Frist Center for the Visual Arts
Announces 2007 Exhibition Schedule

Matisse, Picasso, Degas, and Van Gogh Masterpieces; Mexican Prints;
American Watercolors; Chinese Painting and Photography;
and the Legendary Société Anonyme Highlight the Frist Center’s Sixth Year

NASHVILLE, TENN. — (August 29, 2006) — Three major exhibitions will anchor the Frist Center for the Visual Arts’ 2007 schedule, with Matisse, Picasso, and the School of Paris: Masterpieces from the Baltimore Museum of Art; Lyrical Traditions: Four Centuries of Chinese Paintings from the Papp Collection; and The Société Anonyme: Modernism for America each occupying the Center’s Ingram Galleries.

“We celebrated our fifth birthday this past April and have enjoyed a marvelous selection of exhibitions that highlighted African art, Impressionism, photography, decorative arts and jewelry and the breathtaking exhibition, The Quest for Immortality: Treasures of Ancient Egypt,” says Frist Center Executive Director Susan H. Edwards. “The coming year will be equally engaging with exhibitions that showcase some of the most important artists of the last 150 years. In addition to Matisse and Picasso, visitors will see the art of Diego Rivera, John Singer Sargent, Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, Robert Henri and many more.

“In the fall, our exhibition The Société Anonyme: Modernism for America, on tour from Yale University, presents important pieces by Brancusi, Duchamp, Kandinsky, and others. This outstanding exhibition will offer students of life and art a rare opportunity to study the origins of modernism,” she says. “We are already beginning to lay the groundwork for a series of programs that will have special appeal to educators and art students, alike.

“We welcome the opportunity to share our exhibitions and programs with audiences from our area and around the mid-South and are gratified at the increasing numbers of visitors from around the region who are making the Frist Center a cultural travel destination,” she says.

The 2007 Platinum Sponsor is HCA and the TriStar Family of Hospitals. This is the organization’s fourth year as Platinum Sponsor.

In order of opening, the Frist Center’s exhibition schedule includes:

Mexico and Modern Printmaking: A Revolution in the Graphic Arts, 1920–1950
February 2 – April 15, 2007
Upper–Level Galleries

Mexico and Modern Printmaking: A Revolution in the Graphic Arts, 1920–1950 examines the vital contributions made by Mexican and foreign-born printmakers working in Mexico. The exhibition features 125 prints and posters by 50 artists, including Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, who, while best known for their revolutionary murals and paintings, made extraordinary contributions to the field of printmaking, which they embraced because it could reach a wide audience with their political message. In addition to important prints by well-known Mexican artists, the exhibition will also feature works by such foreign artists as Americans Charles White and Elizabeth Catlett, who were affiliated with the Taller de Gráfica Popular, a celebrated cooperative print workshop founded in Mexico City in 1937. Playing a crucial role in sustaining the ideals of the Mexican Revolution, the workshop printed limited-edition works to capture the attention of international collectors, as well as mass-produced posters and leaflets intended for widespread distribution to the native populace.

This exhibition was organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, San Antonio.

Matisse, Picasso, and the School of Paris: Masterpieces from the Baltimore Museum of Art
March 2 – June 3, 2007
Ingram Gallery

The exhibition, Matisse, Picasso, and the School of Paris: Masterpieces from the Baltimore Museum of Art, will occupy the main-level Ingram Gallery. Consisting of 64 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper from the Baltimore Museum of Art’s extensive collection, this rich exhibition explores the work of artists who made Paris the center of modern art and culture from the late 19th century until the outbreak of World War II. While 27 works by Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso form the core of the exhibition and give the show its name, signature works by predecessors Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Edgar Degas, and Paul Cézanne are also included. Surrealists Andre Masson, Joan Miró, and Max Ernst are also featured.

Many of the works in this exhibition come from the renowned collection of sisters Etta and Claribel Cone of Baltimore, who, in the early 20th century, amassed one of the most important art collections of their time, much of which came through their visits to the Paris studios of Matisse and Picasso.

This exhibition is organized and circulated by the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Hiraki Sawa: Going Places Sitting Down
March 2 – June 3, 2007
Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery

Video artist Hiraki Sawa creates poetic, ephemeral dreamscapes that focus on making visible the realm of imagination. Using toys, books and other household objects as props and backdrops, Sawa produces environments that, when projected onto large screens, take on a dreamlike quality.

Brushed with Light: Masters of American Watercolor from the Brooklyn Museum
May 4 – July 22, 2007
Upper–Level Galleries

This chronological survey of American watercolor landscapes begins with precisely painted scenes from late 18th-century New England and concludes with urban images from the mid-20th century. The majority of the works, however, were created by many of America’s foremost artists of the late 19th century, including William Trost Richards, Thomas Moran, John LaFarge, Winslow Homer, and John Singer Sargent. Also included in the exhibition are early 20th-century paintings by John Marin, who is acknowledged as the bridge that connected the naturalist landscape visions of earlier artists with modernist trends in American art, represented in this exhibition by Marguerite Zorach, Milton Avery, Arthur Dove, Edward Hopper, and regionalist Thomas Hart Benton.

Brushed with Light: Masters of American Watercolor from the Brooklyn Museum has been organized by the Brooklyn Museum.

Lyrical Traditions: Four Centuries of Chinese Paintings from the Papp Collection
June 22 – October 7, 2007
Ingram Gallery

Comprising 60 hand-painted scrolls, hanging scrolls, fans, screens and albums, Lyrical Traditions is drawn from the collection of Phoenix residents Marilyn and Roy Papp. Organized by the Phoenix Museum of Art, the exhibition also features magnificent paintings produced in the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) dynasties. Works in the exhibition show how artists followed stylistic conventions and perpetuated ancient social values related to Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism, while exploring the wide range of expressive approaches possible within that framework. Lyrical Traditions and the concurrent exhibition Whispering Wind: Recent Chinese Photography will be the first exhibitions of Chinese art shown at the Frist Center.

Lyrical Traditions: Four Centuries of Chinese Paintings from the Papp Collection has been organized by the Phoenix Art Museum.

Whispering Wind: Recent Chinese Photography
June 22 – October 7, 2007
Ingram Gallery

This exhibition, organized by the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, includes works by 14 contemporary artists from China, several of whom live in the West. The photographers are internationally celebrated for images that examine contrasts between traditionalism and globalism, the real and unreal, nature and urban life, and the personal and social that have come into sharp focus since the end of the Cultural Revolution. Among the exhibiting artists are Zhang Huan, Rong Rong, and Sheng Qi, whose photographs link performance art with Chinese narrative traditions, showing the effect of social and political structures on the individual. Xing Danwen, Zhang Dali, and Li Tianyuan depict the urban landscape as it has undergone modernization in recent decades. More romanticized landscapes by Hong Lei, Hai Bo, and Yin Xiuzhen suggest millennia-old painting styles, emphasizing the haunting beauty of China’s artistic and literary traditions, in which humanity is wholly integrated with nature.

Sylvia Hyman: Fictional Clay
June 22 – October 7, 2007
Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery and Education Gallery

Sylvia Hyman: Fictional Clay will present 24 meticulously crafted trompe l’oeil sculptures created over the last eight years by Nashville’s renowned clay artist. Hyman translates everyday items that reflect her own interests and personal history—letters, maps, scrolls of sheet music, and books—into stoneware and porcelain, then screenprints them with text, symbols, or images. She places fascinating juxtapositions of these clay objects in a variety of ceramic containers, from berry baskets and wooden boxes to a faux alligator violin case. Like other masters of trompe l’oeil clay, Hyman inspires both the delight and sense of disorientation that occur when one is confronted with superbly realized simulations of the everyday. Organized by the Frist Center, the exhibition will coincide with Hyman’s 90th birthday.

The Société Anonyme: Modernism for America
October 25, 2007 – February 3, 2008
Ingram Gallery

The Société Anonyme: Modernism for America presents highlights of European and American art dating primarily from 1920 to 1940 by major artists including Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Joseph Stella, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Fernand Leger, Piet Mondrian, Kurt Schwitters, and Joseph Albers. The nearly 200 objects in this exhibition, in the collection of the Yale University Art Gallery, were once held by the legendary Société Anonyme, America’s first “experimental museum” for modern art. Established in April 1920 by Katherine Dreier and artists Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, the Société Anonyme promoted contemporary art to American audiences by organizing exhibitions, concerts, dance performances, and lectures. From their efforts, a collection was built that was transferred to Yale in 1941. Today it includes over one thousand European and American paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures.

The Société Anonyme: Modernism for America was organized by Yale University Art Gallery.

Continuing in 2007
Bedazzled: 5,000 Years of Jewelry from the Walters Art Museum
September 15, 2006 – January 14, 2007

Extra-Ordinary: The Everyday Object in American Art
November 10, 2006 – February 11, 2007

Bob Trotman: Model Citizens
November 10, 2006 – February 11, 2007

About the Frist Center

The Frist Center for the Visual Arts, located at 919 Broadway in downtown Nashville, Tenn., is an art exhibition center dedicated to presenting the finest visual art from local, regional, U.S. and international sources in a program of changing exhibitions. The Frist Center’s Martin ArtQuest Gallery features over 30 interactive stations relating to Frist Center exhibitions. Gallery admission to the Frist Center is free for visitors 18 and under and to Frist Center members. Frist Center admission is $8.50 for adults, $7.50 for seniors and military, and $6.50 for college students with ID. Discounts are offered for groups of 10 or more with advance reservation by calling (615) 744-3246. Special admission pricing for The Quest for
Immortality applies: $10 for Frist Center members, $17 for adults, $14 for seniors and free for children 18 an under. Groups of 20 or more with advance reservation may purchase The Quest for Immortality tickets for $14 each by calling (615) 744-3246. Effective June 9–October 8, 2006, during The Quest for Immortality, the Frist Center will be open Saturday–Wednesday from 10:00 a.m. until 5:30 p.m., with extended hours on Thursdays and Fridays until 9:00 p.m. Additional information is available by calling (615) 244-3340 or by visiting our Web site at http://www.fristcenter.org.

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NOTE: High–resolution images available

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