EAST
Knoxville
Highlight Events
March 26 - 29, 2026
Chattanooga
Highlight Events
March 5 - 8, 2026 16-18, 2026
The highlight events will include receptions and celebrations at select participating venues.
KNOXVILLE
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In Spring 2026, the KMA will present a solo exhibition by the Chattanooga-born provocateur Wayne White – a multi-faceted artist, designer, and musician who has charted a kaleidoscopic path through multiple frontiers of art and culture. From Emmy award-winning work as Art Director for Pee Wee’s Playhouse and orchestrating pioneering music videos by acts like Peter Gabriel and The Smashing Pumpkins, to crafting illustrations for The New York Times and singing lead in the art band Username Password, White defies convention to revel in the fray of pop culture. He has also been the subject of the epic 2009 monograph Maybe Now I’ll Get the Respect I so Richly Deserve and an eclectic 2012 documentary titled Beauty is Embarrassing, but the breadth of his work still feels under-appreciated. At the KMA, in concert with a wall painting and a wide-ranging survey of his canvases, drawings and sculpture, White will create a newly commissioned, room-sized kinetic puppet inspired by his memories of the South. This show will be a magnet for collaborators, and will open in conjunction with the Big Ears Festival in 2026 – furnishing a marquee platform for White to unleash an especially unique rendition of his idiosyncratic enterprise.
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February 20 - April 25, 2026
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Solo Exhibition by Brittney Boyd Bullock, a Memphis-based visual artist whose practice traces the intimate relationship between craft legacies, material labor, and identity. Working through textiles, beading, and collage, in slow, modular processes, she builds abstracted worlds that honor both personal and collective memory. Her work is grounded in repetition - stitching, beading, spinning, cutting, arranging - each functioning as a form of embodied research and ritual. Bullock draws on archival photographs, family histories, and Southern craft traditions to examine what has been preserved, overlooked, or obscured within Black American life. Rather than reenacting memory, she reframes it by treating materials as carriers of cultural knowledge. Her signature use of grids, layered images, textiles, and fiber reflects her interest in labor as a site of beauty, resistance, and renewal.
CHATTANOOGA
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The Hunter Invitational, conceived by Hunter Museum Chief Curator Nandini Makrandi and launched by the museum in 2007, highlights emerging trends and current events through the work of artists practicing in the Southeast. Opening January 2026, its fifth iteration will present new or expanded works by eight artists – including Anna Carll, Corrine Colarusso, Craig Drennen, Amie Esslinger, Jerushia Graham, Katie Hargrave with Meredith Lynn, and Althea Murphy-Price – offering audiences a chance to discover some of the region’s most innovative talent.
