Women artists have profoundly shaped the creative scene in Nashville, Tennessee for decades. For the next two months, the history and continued impact of female artists in Music City will be commemorated in the “In Her Place: Nashville Artists in the Twenty-First Century” exhibit at the Frist Art Museum. This exhibit will occupy the largest gallery space until April 26 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the museum. Located in the heart of downtown, just blocks from the neon lights of Nashville’s most famous country music-inspired bars, the Frist is an unexpected, but well-loved, historical landmark home to rotating exhibits.
Stepping into the space, I was immediately struck by the dark and worn wooden floors and elaborate aluminum grillwork. Originally built as the city’s main post office in the 1930s, the Frist opened as an art center in 2001, retaining its art deco architecture. Without any permanent collections, the museum functions as an exhibition center, with rotating exhibits every 2-3 months.
The current exhibit highlights women artists in Nashville, composed of almost 100 works of painting, sculpture and textile. These Nashville-based artists span generations, ethnicities and countries of origin. The exhibit divides their works into three sections: “Materiality and Memory,” “Scenes and Dreams” and “Patterns and Abstraction.”
“Materiality and Memory” addresses the associations that materials and objects can carry with time, place and identity. In this section, Lauren Gregory, an artist from Tennessee, blends traditional crafts like quilting with pop culture references and social commentary in her work, “Unicorn in Captivity,” which references the unicorn tapestry in The Met Cloisters. Another notable work comes from Memphis-born artist Elshieba Israel Mrozik, who explores Black identity and cultural transmission. Using dramatically hung Ankara fabrics associated with African cultures with designs originating from Dutch companies, Mrozik comments on the exploitation of Black culture.
Following this portion of the exhibit is “Scenes and Dreams,” containing pieces that evoke uncanny, otherworldly or surreal feelings while exploring topics like the natural environment and domesticity. This section holds works from two artists with direct ties to Vanderbilt University, Marilyn Murphy and María Magdalena Campos-Pons. As a Professor Emerita of Art at Vanderbilt, Murphy’s works depict women floating in cloudscapes in a film-noir-like composition, referencing the domestic environments of the 1940s and 50s.
Campos-Pons, a Cuban-American artist, moved from Boston to serve as the Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair of Fine Arts in 2017. Her featured works combine native vegetation from the Caribbean and the American South to investigate connections between memory and landscape while telling her family story. She evokes spiritual beliefs as well, suggesting that the plants she illustrates contain a spiritual entity that has influenced her blossoming in Nashville. Despite being placed in the same category, these artists’ works span vastly different styles and content, highlighting the diversity of artistic talent among Vanderbilt faculty and in Nashville more broadly.
Finally, “Patterns and Abstractions” focuses on formal exploration through bright colors, shapes and lines that represent the artist’s experiences with a variety of themes like immigration, memory and family. Covering a wall of the last room of the exhibit is Kelly S William’s “Tondos.” Using Trompe L’oeil techniques to mimic a wooden frame, the Nashville–born artist draws from the patterns of her grandmother’s textiles, evoking a comforting familiarity in bold colors.
This exhibit is an impressive display of talent and artistic depth, resulting in a diverse and rich picture of the lives of women in the American South and beyond. Despite their large presence in the city, female artists in Nashville have been historically underappreciated, an issue this collection aims to address, showing how women artists have defined Nashville’s creative culture. Be sure to make your way downtown to witness an inspiring and impressive display of female artistic talent and experience.
