From the Director

Greetings,

If you were in Nashville in 2004, you may remember seeing European art from The Phillips Collection (Washington, D.C.) at the Frist Center. We are pleased that, beginning in February, we will present The Phillips Collection’s equally renowned collection of American art. The exhibition provides an extraordinary overview of artistic styles and movements of our national heritage. During the summer, we present art from Alabama: Creation Story: Gee’s Bend Quilts and the Art of Thornton Dial as well as Bill Traylor: Drawings from the Collections of the High Museum of Art and the Montgomery Museum of Art.

The Frist Center is quickly gaining stature for exhibitions generated by our curators. For 2012, Mark Scala has organized Fairy Tales, Monsters, and the Genetic Imagination (opening in Nashville in February and then traveling to Winnipeg Art Gallery and Glenbow Museum, Calgary). Katie Delmez has organized Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video (opening in Nashville in September and traveling to Portland Art Museum, Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York).

In 2012 we will present our first exhibition of the beloved English painter John Constable. As a major inspiration for the French Impressionists, Constable remains unsurpassed at capturing the fleeting conditions of nature, especially cloud formations. The year ends with a major exhibition of German Expressionism from the Detroit Institute of Arts. Please join us in 2012 for these and other exhibitions in the Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery and the Conte Community Arts Gallery.

It’s going to be an exciting year, and we hope you will not miss a thing.

Susan H. Edwards, Ph.D.
Executive Director