Frist Center for the Visual Arts Announces 2011 Season Events, Featuring Warhol Live

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 María 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 Pavlovi?, as well as a large-scale sculptural installation by Tracey Snelling of Oakland, California.

"Next year we celebrate our tenth anniversary with an extraordinary range of exhibitions," said Executive Director Susan H. Edwards, Ph.D. "We are particularly pleased to organize Vishnu: Hinduism's Blue-Skinned Savior, the first major museum exhibition to explore one of Hinduism's three deities through visually stunning and symbolically laden sculptures and paintings created throughout India for thousands of years. Throughout our planning processes, we have been gratified to receive the counsel and support of Middle Tennessee's growing Hindu community. The Frist Center is also organizing A Divine Light, a selection of exquisite Northern Renaissance paintings from Bob Jones University. Organized by Frist Center associate curator Trinita Kennedy, A Divine Light will include 28 jewel-like 15th- and 16th-century paintings from the Lowlands, Germany, Switzerland, France and Spain.

"Something completely new for us will be the multi-media exhibition Warhol Live: Music and Dance in Andy Warhol's Work. Through paintings, sculptures, drawings, music, film and photographs, the exhibition shows the breadth of the famed artist's cultural interests, ranging from opera and ballet to the avant-garde music of John Cage and the rock and roll of the Velvet Underground and Rolling Stones. This exhibition is wonderfully appropriate for Music City, and we expect it to draw music and pop-culture lovers from around the region and across the country.

"Photography will be a focus of the year's activities beginning in January with William Eggleston: Anointing the Overlooked which will occupy our Upper-Level Galleries. We are pleased to organize an exhibition of the work of an artist who has influenced generations of fine art photographers and contemporary artists. In the Frist Center's Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery, we will feature photographers Simen Johan and Vanderbilt University's Vesna Pavlovi?. In the fall, Cuban-born María Magdalena Compos-Pons will share a portion of the Upper-Level Galleries with
A Divine Light.

"With each passing year, the Frist Center continues to fulfill the mission that was carefully created more than a decade ago. When the Frist Center opened in April 2001, the founders vowed that the institution would bring the greatest art in the history of the world for local families and visitors to Middle Tennessee to enjoy. The staff and trustees of the Frist Center renew that commitment as we look ahead to the next decade and beyond," Edwards concluded.

The Frist Center's schedule of exhibitions for 2011 can be found by calling (615) 244-3340 or by visiting the Web site at www.fristcenter.org.

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