Women have long been at the center of Nashville’s vibrant visual arts community. Especially now, during the city’s current period of growth, an outsized number of local women artists are receiving prestigious grants, residencies, and awards; are written about by respected critics; and are showing their work across the globe. Many have also dedicated years, even decades, to teaching or building impactful community organizations.

In Her Place highlights this prominent position of women artists here in Music City and beyond through nearly one hundred artworks spanning painting, sculpture, textile, and installation. Selected works by this intergenerational group of Nashville-based women relate broadly to place—whether conceived of as the view of a garden outside a studio window, the influence of being raised in the American South, a moment in time, or the evocation of an ancestral homeland outside of the United States.

Critiquing the exclusion of women from the art-historical canon, scholar Linda Nochlin famously asked in 1971, “Why have there been no great women artists?” In response to her rhetorical question, we offer this exhibition in our largest gallery space as part of our twenty-fifth anniversary to celebrate the achievements of women artists right here in Nashville over the last four decades.

This project will be accompanied by a catalogue coedited by Katie Delmez and Laura Hutson Hunter and published by Vanderbilt University Press.

Artists in the exhibition

This exhibition is part of the 2026 Tennessee Triennial

Organized by the Frist Art Museum and cocurated by Sai Clayton, independent curator and artist; Katie Delmez, Frist Art Museum senior curator; and Shaun Giles, Frist Art Museum community engagement director