Past Exhibitions

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
People walking in a gallery

¡Printing the Revolution! The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics, 1965 to Now

Jun 28–Sep 29, 2024
¡Printing the Revolution! examines how graphic arts have been utilized to build community, engage the public around social concerns, and wrestle with shifting notions of the term Chicano, which Mexican Americans defiantly adopted in the 1960s and 1970s as a sign of a new political and cultural identity. During this… Read More
Young man and woman looking at paintings

Black Joy, in Spite of. . .

Apr 5–Sep 2, 2024
This exhibition offers a three-dimensional picture of the Black American experience by focusing on moments of joy despite a history of pain and struggle. Guest curator Brigette Janea Jones has selected photographs made throughout Tennessee that depict the enslaved and their descendants during various time periods, including enslavement, Reconstruction, the… Read More
Man looking at garment in a case

Lee Alexander McQueen & Ann Ray: Rendez-Vous

May 30–Aug 25, 2024
Lee Alexander McQueen (1969–2010) redefined contemporary fashion with his extraordinary ability to blend exquisite craftsmanship with imaginative storytelling. Mythologized in his own lifetime, the press promoted him variously as fashion’s enfant terrible (terrible child), a troubled genius, and one of the era’s most visionary designers, yet there were few who truly… Read More
Man looking at several clay sculptures in varying shapes

Shahpour Pouyan: Winter in Paradise

May 30–Aug 25, 2024
In works of art astonishing for their beauty, sophistication, and virtuosity, Shahpour Pouyan critiques political power and expresses a poetic melancholy about the human condition. Born in Isfahan, Iran, in 1979, he now divides his time between Tehran and London, and his work is in the permanent collections of the British… Read More
Three women looking around in an elevator with the walls covered in colorful art.

Afrofuturistic Visions: Dreamscapes of Sicasso

Aug 11, 2023–Aug 12, 2024
The Frist Art Museum presents Afrofuturistic Visions: Dreamscapes of Sicasso, an installation that showcases the beauty of African American people, culture, and history. The inspired artist Sicasso encourages those who witness her work to immerse themselves in dreamscape spaces. The installation, located in the Grand Lobby elevator on the east… Read More
Close-up painting of a cicada with glowing lights in the background

Teens Take the Frist!
Focus on Nature

Jul 13–Aug 11, 2024
Prompted by our vision of inspiring people through art to look at their world in new ways, the Frist Art Museum invited teens to submit their artwork for this sixth edition of Teens Take the Frist! The resulting selection features artworks by over ninety emerging Middle Tennessee artists exploring the… Read More