Past Exhibitions

Man holding harvest of cherry tomatoes

Enough to Go Around: Food and Community in Nashville

Mar 21–Jun 29, 2025
The USDA estimates that 30 to 40 percent of the food supply in the United States is wasted, but changes can be made to decrease waste and make nutritious food available for everyone. Nashville-area artists were invited to submit for consideration art that explores topics of food justice, food production,… Read More
Abstract painting with vertical bars and paint strokes in a variety of colors on a dark background

David C. Driskell & Friends: Creativity, Collaboration, and Friendship

Mar 14–Jun 1, 2025
David C. Driskell & Friends: Creativity, Collaboration, and Friendship highlights the artistic legacy of David C. Driskell and the importance of his relationships with fellow artists—many of whom hold a significant place in the 20th-century art canon. In 1976, Driskell curated the groundbreaking exhibition Two Centuries of Black American Art: 1750–1950, which… Read More
African American boy sitting in front of a large tree with sunflowers blooming all around him.

Kindred Spirits: Intergenerational Forms of Expression, 1966–1999

Mar 14–Jun 1, 2025
1966 marked the centennial year of Fisk University, the oldest institution for higher learning in Nashville, Tennessee. It also represented a moment of transition after the retirement of Aaron Douglas, founder and chair of Fisk’s Art Department and a leading figure of the Harlem Renaissance. The appointment of David C. Read More
People milling about buying and selling vegetables and tables set up in a park like setting in a city

Farm to Table: Art, Food, and Identity in the Age of Impressionism

Jan 31–May 4, 2025
Farm to Table: Art, Food, and Identity in the Age of Impressionism explores the intersections of art, gastronomy, and national identity in late 19th-century France. Beginning with the 1870 Prussian siege of Paris and the resultant food crisis and continuing through the 1890s, Farm to Table showcases the work of… Read More
Older woman standing in a cabbage patch resting her hands on the top of a hoe

Tennessee Harvest: 1870s–1920s

Jan 31–May 4, 2025
Tennessee Harvest focuses on 19th- and early 20th-century painters taking both realist and impressionist approaches to the depiction of food and its cultivation in the state. A companion show to Farm to Table: Art, Food, and Identity in the Age of Impressionism, this exhibition shows how artists like Lloyd… Read More
Dark figure emerging from its skin

M. Florine Démosthène
and Didier William: What the Body Carries

Jan 31–May 4, 2025
This exhibition of Haitian American artists M. Florine Démosthène and Didier William—both featured in the Frist Art Museum’s 2023 group show Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage—examines the capacity of immigrant bodies to recall a homeland while also reflecting a new, hybrid existence. Through a selection of figurative… Read More
Young woman looking at a work of art

2024 Young Tennessee Artists: Selections from Advanced Studio Art Programs

Sep 6, 2024–Mar 16, 2025
The Frist Art Museum’s tenth biennial Young Tennessee Artists exhibition showcases over thirty two-dimensional works of art by students enrolled in Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) studio art programs during the 2023–24 academic year. Artworks for the exhibition were selected by a jury of artists, educators, and museum… Read More
Two women looking at a display of Japanese young fashion.

Journey through Japan:
Myths to Manga

Oct 25, 2024–Feb 16, 2025
Designed with our younger audience in mind, yet fun and fascinating for all ages, this exhibition goes on a colorful, atmospheric exploration through Japan to show how popular stories have shaped the country’s art, design, and technology across the centuries. Divided into four thematic sections—Sky, Sea, Forest, and City—it presents… Read More
Visitors looking at works of art on view in the Maria Magdalena Compos-Pons exhibition

María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Behold

Sep 27, 2024–Jan 5, 2025
María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Behold includes over three decades of the artist’s work in photography, installation, video, painting, and performance. Hauntingly beautiful and emotionally charged, Behold shows how Campos-Pons’s layered identity as a Cuban woman with ancestral roots in the Yoruba culture of West Africa as well as in Spain and China inform… Read More
Woman standing in a room filled with abstract purple and pink shapes projected on the walls

LaJuné McMillian:
The Portal’s Keeper—Origins

Sep 27, 2024–Jan 5, 2025
New York–based multidisciplinary artist LaJuné McMillian combines extended reality software and mediums including movement and sound to provide an exuberant visual critique of oppressive systems that commodify bodies and otherwise limit free expressions. Working with motion capture (witnessing) software, their work often translates the movements of Black people, seen as… Read More