Frist exhibit celebrates past political, social events
By Chris Amos
Diversity Institute Fellow
08.12.04
Marianne Katz, a volunteer at the Frist Center for Visual Arts, has come full circle after seeing a painting of a young woman leaving home while her parents watched sadly.
The painting — one of approximately 70 on display in an exhibit at the Nashville museum-was completed only a decade before Katz left home to study oil painting at the Brooklyn Museum Art School. The painting's creator, Isaac Sawyer, was one of Katz's instructors there.
Katz said that many of the paintings brought back vivid memories of her childhood in Nashville.
"They were realists," she said of the artists who created the works on exhibit. "They painted life as they saw it around them."
The exhibit-titled Coming Home: American Paintings, 1930-1950-has been at the Frist Center since June and will remain until Sept. 5. Museum officials say it has drawn what they call average attendance. On Wednesday, about 15 people visited the exhibit during roughly an hour period in the afternoon.
Mimi Fondren, media relations coordinator for the museum, said the exhibit illustrates the sweeping social, artistic and political transformations undergone from 1930-1950. The exhibit touches on the hardships of war, economic depression, and racial oppression, among other things.
Gloria Carrera, a writer from Los Angeles, was among those visiting the exhibit on Wednesday. She said she was moved by a picture of a black mechanic serving in a segregated Army unit during World War II. It reminded her of the difficulties that soldiers face today in Iraq.
"The reality of war hasn't changed," she said.
Carrera said that she appreciated the exhibit because it encouraged free thinking — something that she said she found lacking in today's politics.
"It reminds me that this is the one place where we can be free with our politics," she said.
Mark Scalla, exhibitions coordinator at the Frist Center, said that people unfamiliar with the visual arts would still find the exhibit interesting because the painters were trying to recreate the human experiences and emotions and not doing "art for art's sake."
"If you're of a certain age, you may remember the hardships of the Depression," he said. "If not, you may remember a parent or grandparent telling you about the hardships."
Scalla said younger people would be able to relate to the situations portrayed in the exhibit's paintings.
"We still experience some of the same social problems," he said. "The exhibit has a lot of resonance emotionally and politically."