Frist Center Extends Free Admission Through May 9

The Frist Center will extend the offer of free admission through Sunday, May 9, the opening day of Chihuly at the Frist. The decision made by Executive Director Susan H. Edwards and the senior staff to offer respite from the events of recent days.  Current exhibits include Masterpieces of European Painting from the Museo de Arte de Ponce and U-Ram Choe: New Urban Species.  For more information visit http://fristcenter.org/site/default.aspx. 

Hours:
Wednesday, May 5: 10:00 - 5:30 p.m.
Thursday, May 6: 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m.
Friday, May 7: 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m.
Saturday, May 8: 10:00 a.m. - 5:30 p.m.
Sunday, May 9: 1:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.

Chihuly at the Frist opens on Sunday, May 9 and runs through Jan 2, 2011.  There are few contemporary artists whose name is as synonymous with the medium in which he works as Dale Chihuly, who is widely regarded as the most innovative glass artist working today. Active since the 1960s, Chihuly is credited with almost single handedly elevating the postwar American studio glass movement to the international prominence it now enjoys.

Chihuly at the Frist will showcase the unsurpassed mastery of the artist and his Seattle glass-studio collaborators in nine installations drawn from some of Chihuly's most acclaimed series, designed specifically for the Frist Center's galleries. 

Among the featured series are Venetians, a brilliantly colored and intricately formed group of works that was inspired in 1988 by a famed Italian glass master; Ikebana, which was informed by the Japanese art of flower arranging; Persians, conjuring the exotic and enchanted lands of the Far East; Macchia, borne of Chihuly's desire to use hundreds of colors in rippling forms based on vases created in the famed Venini glass factory in Venice; and Seaforms, which celebrates the waving and rippling shapes and rhythms of underwater life. In addition, the exhibition will include a spectacular Mille Fiori (a thousand flowers) garden and the Sea Blue and Green Tower, a mammoth sculpture that masses colorful, curving forms in a large-scale work that rises nearly ten feet tall and occupies an entire gallery.

Also on exhibition will be a wall of Chihuly's drawings that serve as independent works of art and "blueprints" to communicate and inspire his glassblowers to bring his designs to life and to improvise on the themes he has created.

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