Nashville's Frist Center - a magnificent facility in a unique city!

Doc Lawrence

Nashville is a city on the move. It’s new south while retaining its rich culture, architecture, and unparalled music traditions. A solid case can be made that this state capital city by the Cumberland River is the most American of all the great metropolises.

The downtown district is loaded with history. This is where country music was truly born. But, modern music is all-encompassing, and Nashville remains at the epicenter of recorded music. Musicians from the Earth’s four corners flock here, hoping to become the next Elvis or Patsy Cline.

There’s nothing one-dimensional here, however. Check out Carousel, a masterpiece featuring carved horses with the heads of country music legends by New York artist and Nashville native son, Red Grooms.

Then, there’s the highly acclaimed Frist Center for Visual Arts, which literally saved the old downtown post office and gave this city a magnificent facility that opens beautiful new worlds for denizens and visitors alike. The exhibit From Post Office to Art Center: A Nashville Landmark in Transition (running through February 24, 2002) examines the history of the Frist Center's Art Deco-style building and its transformation into the Frist Center.

With its 24,000 square feet of gallery space,the Frist hosts major U.S. and international exhibitions as well as works by local, state and regional artists. With ever-changing treasures from around the world, each visit provides new opportunities for discovery. Under the progressive leadership of its enlightened Mayor, Bill Purcell, Nashville is growing the proper way. It remains connected to unique history and is a leader in development of a livable city, friendly to pedestrians, and offering cultural delights that assure tourists will want a return visit.

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The Frist Center for the Visual Arts is dedicated to presenting great art from around the world. The Center hosts traveling exhibitions from the United States and abroad, as well as developing its own exhibitions on a diverse range of themes. Some exhibitions remain a few months. Some for up to three years. With ever-changing treasures from around the world, each visit provides new opportunities for discovery. Click to view current exhibitions, or click here to view upcoming treasures!

Realms of Faith:
Medieval and Byzantine Art from the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

April 12, 2002 - August 15,2004

This exhibition presents approximately 100 precious objects in a variety of media from the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, an institution renowned for its rich collections in these areas. The exhibition encompasses both religious and secular works spanning the 4th through 14th centuries in the Catholic West and the 4th through 18th centuries in the Byzantine and Orthodox East, evoking times and places -- as diverse as Coptic Egypt, medieval France, Byzantine Greece, Orthodox Russia and Christian Ethiopia -- where faith played an integral role in every-day life. Realms of Faith is organized by the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, exclusively for the Frist Center.

Bold Improvisation:
120 Years of African American Quilts

July 18, 2003 - October 5, 2003

This exhibition provides a fascinating look at the development of African American quilts from the period just after the Civil War to the present. Drawn from the Heffley collection, one of the most comprehensive private collections of African American quilts in the United States, Bold Improvisation invites visitors to compare traditional African textiles with early quilt designs produced in this country, while showcasing exciting developments in the art form to the present day. Organized by Smith-Kramer.

Art of Tennessee:
September 13, 2003 - January 18, 2004

Surveying the history of aesthetic expressions from the earliest native American populations to the most significant artists of our own times, “Art of Tennessee” will include approximately 250 of the most extraordinary examples of paintings, sculptures, furniture, quilts, pottery, silver, maps, and other forms of art created throughout Tennessee or that relate to Tennessee. Organized by the Frist Center for the Visual Arts.

From El Greco to Picasso:
European Masterworks from The Phillips Collection

January 31, 2004 - May 16, 2004

This exhibition includes over 50 European modern masterworks by artists such as van Gogh, Cézanne, Monet, Degas, Picasso, Bonnard, Gauguin, and Klee. The exhibition reflects Duncan Phillips’ personal understanding of modern art and his approach to collecting and interpreting it. Phillips saw modernism not as a break with the past, but as a continuation. His goal was not to create an encyclopedic collection, but rather to assemble groups of works that would resonate off one another, revealing the visual harmonies that tied together historical masterworks with the art of his own time. From El Greco to Picasso will present works of the late 19th and early 20th centuries alongside works by earlier masters that Phillips felt anticipated the modern movements, such as Delacroix, Ingres, El Greco, and Chardin. This exhibition has been organized by The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Jacob Lawrence:
The Migration Series from the Phillips Collection

January 31, 2004 - May 16, 2004

African American master Jacob Lawrence’s powerful Migration Series ranks as one of the great visual and social documents of twentieth-century American art. With stark poignancy, the paintings in the series chronicle the movement of blacks from the rural South to the industrial North between the two world wars. The Migration Series is on loan from The Phillips Collection, in Washington, D.C.

Icons & Idols:
A Photographer's Chronicle of the Arts

October 24, 2003 - February 1, 2004

This exhibition features photographs of art world luminaries by New York photographer Jack Mitchell, whose works have been published in the New York Times, Village Voice, Life, and myriad other publications. Mitchell’s insightful photographs reveal the character of such subjects as Gloria Swanson, Andy Warhol, John Travolta, Martha Graham, Truman Capote, and many others. This exhibition is organized by Atlantic Center for the Arts, New Smyrna Beach, Florida.

Quest for Immortality:
Treasures of Ancient Egypt

June 8, 2006 - October 8, 2006

Considered the largest group of antiquities ever on loan from Egypt for exhibit in North America, this collection includes 115 objects, many of which have never been seen publicly or outside of Egypt. Ranging in date from the New Kingdom (1550-1069 B.C.) through the Late Period (664-332 B.C.), the works of art include luxurious objects that furnished tombs, including jewelry, painted reliefs, implements used in religious rituals, a sarcophagus richly painted with scenes of the afterlife, and an ancient painted model of the royal barge that carried the pharaohs along the Nile. The exhibition installation also offers a full-scale reproduction of the burial chamber of the New Kingdom pharaoh Thutmose III (1479-1425 B.C.).
The exhibition is organized by United Exhibits Group, Copenhagen, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, in association with the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Cairo. Objects are loaned by the Egyptian government and come from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the Luxor Museum, and the sites of Tanis and Deir El-Bahri.

Looking for great food in Music City?
Try one of Doc's favorites: The Stock-Yard Restaurant

and don't miss Nashville's restored Grand Hotel - The Hermitage

Stroll with Doc Lawrence through interesting galleries and museums in other cities:

In Atlanta, the High Museum of Art, and Emory University's Michael C. Carlos Museum

St. Petersburg's Salvadore Dali Museum

A variety of galleries in New Orleans

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