2011 Frist Center Exhibition Schedule Features Andy Warhol, Art of India, Egyptian and Shaker Cultures, Northern Renaissance Paintings

Contemporary Art Exhibitions Include Works of William Eggleston, Simen Johan, Vesna Pavlovic, Magdalena Compos-Pons

NASHVILLE, Tenn., Aug. 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Frist Center for the Visual Arts celebrates its tenth year and continues to gain prominence as a major center for art exhibitions with the 2011 Ingram Gallery exhibition schedule that includes the Frist-organized Vishnu: Hinduism's Blue-Skinned Savior, Warhol Live: Music and Dance in Andy Warhol's Work and the stunning exhibition of Egyptian antiquities, To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum.

The Frist Center's Upper-Level Galleries will feature photographs by Tennessee native William Eggleston, one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century, an important collection of Shaker furniture, Northern Renaissance paintings from Bob Jones University and works of Cuban-born installation artist and photographer Maria Magdalena Compos-Pons. The Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery will showcase photographs and sculptures by the New York-based Simen Johan, Vanderbilt University Assistant Professor of Art and Serbian native Vesna Pavlovic, as well as a large-scale sculptural installation by Tracey Snelling of Oakland, California.

The Frist Center's schedule of exhibitions for 2011 in order of opening:

William Eggleston: Anointing the Overlooked

Jan. 21–May 1, 2011

Upper-Level Galleries

William Eggleston: Anointing the Overlooked brings together more than 70 photographs made by the Memphis, Tenn., resident who is one of the most influential artists of his generation.  The exhibition includes iconic images from the early 1970s, important series and portfolios held in the Memphis Brooks collection as well as the rarely seen 21st Century Photographs.  William Eggleston was a key figure in charting a new course for color photography.  Prior to his first exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (New York) in 1976, fine art photography was typically black and white, while color photography was used commercially.  By not censoring, rarely editing and photographing the seemingly banal, Eggleston reminds us of the inherently democratic uses of and wide-spread access to photography.  His images are psychologically complex, yet structurally quotidian, drawing attention to the power and beauty of the overlooked. Eggleston's work has influenced subsequent generations of fine art photographers and contemporary artists. The exhibition is organized for the Frist Center for the Visual Arts by Susan H. Edwards, Ph.D., Frist Center executive director and CEO.

Vishnu: Hinduism's Blue-Skinned Savior

Feb. 20–May 29, 2011

Ingram Gallery

Vishnu: Hinduism's Blue-Skinned Savior will be the first major museum exhibition to focus on Vishnu—one of Hinduism's three major deities.  Composed of approximately 150 paintings and sculptures made in India between the second century and 1900 A.D., this exhibition will serve as a brief survey of Hindu art styles as well as an examination of the Vaishnava (Vishnu-worshipping) tradition. Known as Hinduism's gentle god, Vishnu is easily recognized in paintings because of his blue skin, which legend states is the result of ingesting a particularly powerful poison that threatened to destroy the world.

The exhibition will be accompanied by an illustrated catalog published by Mapin Publishing, an Indian art book publishing company.

Vishnu: Hinduism's Blue-Skinned Savior is organized by the Frist Center for the Visual Arts with Guest Curator Joan Cummins.

Simen Johan: Until the Kingdom Comes

Feb. 20–May 29, 2011

Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery

Simen Johan's works reflect uneasy connections between humans and other species. His digital photographs, which show live or taxidermied animals Photoshopped onto various natural and human-made landscape environments, blur boundaries between the real and unreal, animal and human and beauty and brutality. His sculptures of taxidermied birds are interwoven with insects and foliage, serving in his words as "miniature parasitical ecosystems."

Simen Johan: Until the Kingdom Comes is organized by the Frist Center for the Visual Arts.

Connecting Cultures: Children's Stories from Across the World

April 15, 2011–March 27, 2012

Conte Community Arts Gallery

This exhibition is the result of the Frist Center for the Visual Arts and ten diverse local community organizations working together on a project that explores the ways art may be used to tell children's stories from a number of cultural perspectives.  Starting with the premise that the stories of children simultaneously reflect unique cultural values as well as perspectives that are shared across cultures, the stories presented in this exhibition present universal human experiences and concerns that connect us all.

Connecting Cultures: Children's Stories from Across the World is organized by the Frist Center for the Visual Arts.

Gather Up the Fragments: The Andrews Shaker Collection

May 20–Aug. 21, 2011

Upper-Level Galleries

Gather Up the Fragments focuses upon the collection of Faith and Edward Deming Andrews, who from the 1920s through the 1960s formed a large and important assemblage of Shaker art and pioneered Shaker studies. This comprehensive exhibition includes more than 270 objects—furniture, drawings, household objects, textiles, baskets and kitchen implements—and will provide insight into this intriguing religious group that valued many ideas that resonate today such as equality, pacifism, community, sustainability, responsible land stewardship, innovation, simplicity, and quality in work.

Gather Up the Fragments: The Andrews Shaker Collection is organized by Hancock Shaker Village, Pittsfield, MA.

Warhol Live: Music and Dance in Andy Warhol's Work

June 24–Sept. 11, 2011

Ingram Gallery

Over the course of his meteoric career, Andy Warhol (1928–1987) used the medium of music to transform himself from fan to record album designer, producer, celebrity night-clubber and rock impresario. Warhol Live presents a comprehensive exploration of the artist's work as experienced through the lens of music and dance. This exhibition juxtaposes major pieces (Elvis, Marilyn, Liza Minnelli, Grace Jones, Mick Jagger, Debbie Harry, the Self-portraits and the Campbell's Soup Cans) with lesser-known works inspired by music and the performing arts (album covers, illustrations, photos and Polaroids), along with films and sound recordings, which provide a visual and aural score to Warhol's extraordinary work and life. The exhibition includes nearly 300 works, including objects and documents from the artist's personal archives.

Warhol Live: Music and Dance in Andy Warhol's Work is produced by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in partnership with The Andy Warhol Museum, one of the four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.

Vesna Pavlovic: Projected Histories

June 24–Sept. 11, 2011

Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery

This exhibition will include photographs taken in Vesna Pavlovic's native Serbia and the United States over the last two decades. Focusing on sites and events of cultural significance, Pavlovic examines the power of photography to shape the perception of history as an expression of people's dreams and aspirations by projecting and conflating self-images and national ideologies.  The exhibition begins with a selection of photographs that were taken in Serbia during the 1990s and explore the failure of utopian modernism under Communism while posing questions about the veneer of normalcy maintained during the civil war and allied bombardment. It concludes with an installation of recent works that considers the values and consumerist ideologies relating to contemporary American life.

Vesna Pavlovic: Projected Histories is organized by the Frist Center for the Visual Arts.

A Divine Light: Northern Renaissance Paintings from Bob Jones University Museum & Gallery

Sept. 9, 2011–Feb. 5, 2012

Upper-Level Galleries

This exhibition, which has received support from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, presents twenty-eight Renaissance paintings from one of the most renowned Old Master collections in the United States. The collection was formed during the mid-twentieth century by the evangelical preacher Dr. Bob Jones, Sr., for display at the university bearing his name in Greenville, S.C. The large number of Baroque paintings that Jones acquired tends to overshadow other parts of the collection, and A Divine Light marks the first time that the museum's equally beautiful Northern Renaissance paintings have been the sole focus of an exhibition and catalogue. These works of art, which consist of altarpieces and private devotional paintings, will be considered in regard to the latest scholarship and theories about the visual culture of the Renaissance. Several paintings will undergo conservation treatment in preparation for their presentation at the Frist Center.  

A Divine Light: Northern Renaissance Paintings from Bob Jones University Museum & Gallery is organized by the Frist Center for the Visual Arts.

Maria Magdalena Compos-Pons: Journeys

Sept. 9, 2011–Feb. 5, 2012

Upper-Level Galleries

The Cuban-born artist Maria Magdelena Campos-Pons creates photographs, video and multi-media installations that tell the story of the survival of African cultures by evoking rites, myths and narratives that have evolved through generations. Her work symbolically follows the history of the slave trade from her family's origin in Nigeria to Cuba, where they worked in the sugar industry, to present-day Boston, where Campos-Pons now works and teaches.  

Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons: Journeys is organized by the Frist Center for the Visual Arts.

To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum

Oct. 7, 2011–Jan. 8, 2012

Ingram Gallery

Following the incredibly successful Quest for Immortality exhibition, which came to the Frist Center in 2006, To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum includes 109 important works from the superb collection of the Brooklyn Museum that illustrate Egyptian beliefs regarding the defeat of death and promise of the eternal afterlife.  To Live Forever explores the ancient Egyptian belief that proper preparation could enable a person to overcome the finality of death. The objects on display, including coffins, jewels and statuary from the Brooklyn Museum's extensive, world-renowned collection, introduce visitors to the mysteries of mummification, the funeral procession and rituals that prepared the entombed deceased for passage to the underworld, the final judgment of the gods in determining the disposition of the soul and the idealized afterlife. The objects in the exhibition were created over a period of more than 4,000 years.  

To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum has been organized by the Brooklyn Museum.

Tracey Snelling:  Woman on the Run

Oct. 7, 2011–Jan. 8, 2012

Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery

Tracey Snelling's sculptures of vernacular buildings, streets and rundown neighborhoods show a keen sensitivity to the psychological tensions and hidden narratives of small town America. A large tableau of wooden structures, videos, projections and other mediums, Woman on the Run provides a film-noir-like setting for a crime story in which a mysterious woman is sought for questioning in a murder.

Tracey Snelling: Woman on the Run is organized by the Frist Center for the Visual Arts.

About the Frist Center

Accredited by the American Association of Museums, the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, located at 919 Broadway in downtown Nashville, Tenn., is an art exhibition center dedicated to presenting the finest visual art from local, regional, U.S. and international sources in a program of changing exhibitions. The Frist Center's Martin ArtQuest Gallery features interactive stations relating to Frist Center exhibitions. Gallery admission to the Frist Center is free for visitors 18 and younger and to Frist Center members. With possible exception for some specially-ticketed exhibitions, Frist Center admission is $10.00 for adults and $7.00 for seniors, military and college students with ID.  College students are admitted free Thursday and Friday evenings, 5–9 p.m.  Discounts are offered for groups of 10 or more with advance reservation by calling (615) 744-3247. The Frist Center is open seven days a week: Mondays through Wednesdays, and Saturdays, 10 a.m.–5:30 p.m.; Thursdays and Fridays, 10 a.m.–9 p.m. and Sundays, 1–5:30 p.m., with the Frist Center Cafe opening at noon. Additional information is available by calling (615) 244-3340 or by visiting our Web site at www.fristcenter.org.

SOURCE Frist Center for the Visual Arts