Southern/Modern
Jan. 26-April 28 at the Frist Art Museum
The biggest local art show of the season — maybe even the year — is Southern/Modern at the Frist. It’s the first comprehensive survey of paintings and works-on-paper created in the American South between 1913 and 1955. The show tracks the evolution of early modern art in the U.S. and reflects the social upheaval and cultural transformations that took place across the South during the first half of the 20th century. The exhibition is organized by the Mint Museum in Charlotte, N.C., in collaboration with the Georgia Museum of Art. The display features more than 100 works from artists including Carroll Cloar, Aaron Douglas, Caroline Durieux, Will Henry Stevens and Alma Thomas, as well as Black Mountain College luminaries like Josef Albers, Jacob Lawrence and Elaine de Kooning. Southern/Modern also includes selections from Thomas Hart Benton and Elizabeth Catlett, whose work helped highlight Southern themes. I’ve been suggesting that contemporary American art is trending toward the kind of abstraction and formalism we find in early prewar modernism. For me, Southern/Modern is arriving right on time, and it’s my most highly anticipated local show of 2024.
Marilyn Murphy: Curious Circumstances
Through March 22 at Haley Gallery
The Country Music Hall of Fame and Hatch Show Print are iconic local culture destinations, but sometimes the bigger programming at the museum can overshadow the shows at Hatch’s Haley Gallery. The space recently hosted a painting exhibition by iconic painter Wayne White and a printmaking invitational that included work from 60 printers from across the U.S. Curious Circumstances is a new exhibition of drawings from Vanderbilt professor emerita of art Marilyn Murphy. I’m a longtime fan of Murphy’s meticulous graphite drawings, which speak to midcentury design aesthetics, film noir and science-fiction. This show also nods to Hatch history, including a selection of letterpress prints from the artist.
“Parallels,” Emily Weiner
Emily Weiner: Never Odd or Even
Feb. 3-24 at Red Arrow
Never Odd or Even is Emily Weiner’s first solo exhibition at Red Arrow, and viewers can expect a signature display of the artist’s paintings in creative frames. Weiner’s works are symbolic and figurative, and packed with allusions to classical theater and ancient religious practices as well as celestial bodies and other natural forms. Their elemental subjects make them universally appealing, and her unique combinations of oils-on-linen with painted wood and ceramic frames make her work unmistakable. Never Odd or Even opens Feb. 3 with a reception from 6 to 9 p.m. during the February Art Crawl.
Caroline Allison: Waiting Between the Trees
Feb. 3-March 30 at Zeitgeist
A Caroline Allison show at Zeitgeist is always an event, and her latest exhibition finds the artist continuing her explorations of the natural world even as she continues to evolve her practice and her ideas about what photography can be. With Waiting Between the Trees, Allison is reengaging evergreen conversations about landscapes and time. Portraits of rocks and pictures of clouds as well as cyanotypes are presented in a series of shaped, bent and folded prints. The result is a show that challenges the formal boundaries that separate painting, photography and sculpture. It looks like another groundbreaking exhibition from Allison. (Allison's piece "Book of Hours" is featured on the cover of this week's issue.) Waiting Between the Trees opens on Feb. 3, with special First Saturday hours from noon until 8 p.m.
Rob Matthews: Fragments
March 23-April 27 at David Lusk
Rob Matthews has been teasing a series of large, colorful, graphic abstract paintings on Instagram for months, and we’ll finally get to see the real things when the artist opens Fragments at David Lusk in March. These large acrylic-on-canvas abstracts feature boldly minimalist palettes and compositions that nod to print design and represent a 180-degree turn from the Cubism-inspired portraits the artist has formerly created. Matthews has been on this abstraction kick since at least 2021, when he showed a massive multipanel mural called “The Forest” at Lusk’s Nashville space. And that puts the artist ahead of the 2024 art trends, which will find fewer figures and narratives on our gallery walls.
A look at the state of Nashville’s visual arts scene, along with previews of coming art, theater, dance, film and book events
