MIDDLE
The highlight events will include receptions and celebrations at select participating venues.
NASHVILLE
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Nashville host Museum
In Her Place: Nashville Artists in the Twenty-First Century
January 29 to April 26, 2026
919 Broadway, Nashville, TN 37203
Mon: 10 a.m.–5:30 p.m.
Tues/ Wed: closed
Thurs: 10 a.m.–8 p.m.
Fri/ Sat: 10 a.m.–5:30 p.m.
Sun: 1–5:30 p.m. -
Women have long been at the center of Nashville’s vibrant visual arts community, and In Her Place highlights their influence by presenting nearly 100 paintings, sculptures, textile pieces, and installations from 28 intergenerational women artists exploring ideas of place and identity. Part of the Frist’s 25th-anniversary celebration, the exhibition underscores the museum’s commitment to the local arts community and will be accompanied by a catalogue co-edited by Katie Delmez and Laura Hutson Hunter and published by Vanderbilt University Press.
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February 9 - March 6
Buttrick Hall, 2400 Vanderbilt Place, Nashville, TN 37212
8am to 8pm, Every Day
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In summer 2025 Vanderbilt faculty Jana Harper, Lutz Koepnick, and Jonathan Rattner traveled to Svalbard to pursue a project on art and climate change in the Polar North. Their aim was to engage with Svalbard's rapidly transforming landscapes and experiment with different artistic methods to address the effects of planetary overheating. In February 2026 some of this work will be on view in Buttrick Hall in a building-wide installation, featuring continuously running experimental films, large-scale photographs, intricate collages, and didactic displays discussing the overall project. Svalbard is famous for its history of extractive coal mining and more recently for its Global Seed Vault. Seeds from Svalbard aspires to transform Buttrick Hall into an ark of curiosity and inquiry—a space for unexpected encounters that challenge what we take for granted about our environments. A series of public events will complement this exhibition, including an interdisciplinary panel featuring artists and scientists jointly discussing the challenges of overheating and resilience, a screening and discussion of the team’s 75-minute collaborative film, and an experimental music program.
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Middle TN Letterpress Exhibition
January 10 to February 14, 2026
The New Gallery at Austin Peay State University 15 Henry Street Clarksville TN 37040
Monday-Friday, 9:00am-4:00pm
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The Department of Art + Design is excited to feature the works of letterpress artists living and working in Middle Tennessee. Hatch Show Print, in downtown Nashville, has been making letterpress show print posters for over 140 years. From Hatch Show many artists have learned and expanded the practice; APSU’s own Goldsmith Press and Rare Type collection has been made possible, in part, by Hatch Show Print. This legacy has created a unique history and application of design and art in this region. To celebrate, the Department of Art and Design is coordinating a two-day Middle Tennessee Letterpress symposium and accompanying exhibition. The exhibition will open in the New Gallery in early February until March 20; the closing reception will be from noon – 1pm in the New Gallery on Thursday, March 5. The symposium will take place Wednesday, March 4 and Thursday, March 5, featuring letterpress and typographic demonstrations from Heather Moulder, Cory Wasnewsky, Celene Aubry, and Kathleen O’Connell, with short evening lectures from each artist-designer.
The Letterpress symposium exhibition features work from Heather Moulder, Cory Wasnewsky, Bryce McCloud, Laura Baisden, Celene Aubry, Kathyleen O’Connell, Sarah Angelica Rivera Abad, Nick Larson, Violet Stubbs, Jackson Haley, and selections from the Hatch Show Print archive.
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Time After Time, Karen Seapker
January 17 to February 28, 2026
919 Gallatin Ave. Suite 4, Nashville, TN 37206
Thursday-Saturday 11am-6pm
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Karen Seapker’s paintings navigate physical, emotional, and intellectual connections through intensely saturated colors, historical references, shifting lines, and disrupted spaces. While employing strong geometric patterns, her dynamic, gestural style embraces movement and alludes to the power of human relationships and the natural world. Many of the paintings Seapker has produced in the last decade incorporate the garden she tends just outside her studio, which functions as a sanctuary and a teacher in relation to our greater world. Seapker graduated with a BA in studio art and art history from Muhlenberg College, Allentown, PA, and an MFA in painting from Hunter College, New York. Her work has been exhibited in spaces including James Cohan Gallery in NYC and Shanghai, The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA, Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago, Sargent's Daughters in Los Angeles, The Shepherd in Detroit, Plato Gallery in NYC, Zeitgeist and Red Arrow in Nashville. Seapker’s work was included in Crystal Bridges Museum’s survey of contemporary art, State of the Art 2020, and was acquired as a part of the museum’s permanent collection. Her work is included in various private collections worldwide. She has received numerous recognitions for her work, including the Austin Peay State University Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts Tennessee Artist Fellowship; the ChaNorth residency, Pine Planes, NY; two New American Paintings Southern Competition features; and two nominations for the Joan Mitchell Fellowship. Reviews of her work have been in publications including Burnaway, Hyperallergic, and ArtForum and Wall Street Journal. She lives and works in Nashville, TN and is represented by Red Arrow.
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February 5 to February 24, 2026
516 Hagan Street, Nashville, TN 37203
Tue-Sat 11-5pm
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This 33-artist group show takes its conceptual point of departure from the album Johnny Cash and His Woman, co-written by June Carter, whose creative labor has historically been referred to under the possessive designation “Johnny’s woman.” This naming reflects a common pattern of erasure, one in which women’s contributions are rendered secondary, anonymous, or instrumentalized in service of a figure of cultural authority. Painting and Her Women engages this pattern by foregrounding the overlooked materials that sustain artistic practices, specifically the tools and processes that are foundational yet rarely given appropriate appreciation.
The artists in the exhibition engage materiality as a method of inquiry. They use processes to reconsider authorship and generate meaning. The palette, in particular, shifts from a secondary support to an active participant in the work. This shift raises a central question: does a work of art reside solely in the finished object, or does it also exist within the acts, tools, and decisions that lead to its making?
Within the exhibition, tools of painting function as both material and metaphor, crediting process, labor, and material intelligence as key components of authorship. Artists utilize palettes, biscuit cutters, and rolling pins. Their apertures, handles, and surfaces record touch, pressure, and duration, making embodied knowledge visible through form. The exhibition challenges singular perceptions and complexifies what it has meant to be defined by labels such as mother, woman, binary, female, and lady painter.
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February 6 to February 28, 2026
1411 Buchanan St, Nashville, TN 37208
Fri Sat 12-6 or by appt
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Xavier Payne (better known as XPayne) is an award-winning artist and illustrator. Born in Flint, Michigan and raised in Nashville, Tennessee, Payne earned a BFA from Watkins college of Art Design and Film in 2014. He began his professional career as a graphic artist working for companies with clients like Target, Walgreens and Wal-Mart. At the same time, XPayne moon-lighted as an illustrator working for cuktural icons like Spike Lee and Issa Rae, and gaining and support from the likes of Wesley Snipes and Martin Lawrence. In 2022, XPayne was named Best Artist of the Year by the Nashville Scene, where he is based.
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February 7 to June 30, 2026
444 Humphreys Street, Nashville TN, 37203
Saturdays 12-6pm & by appointment
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Nine artists, self-curating nine micro galleries within Julia Martin Gallery for 6 months, rotating their exhibitions monthly.
Scott Anderson, Ash Atterberry, Megan Curtin, Brooke Gillon, Julia Martin, Keavy Murphree, Bill Nickels, Noah Saterstrom, Natasha Sud
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February 5 to April 24, 2026
1801 Edgehill Avenue, Nashville, TN 37212
M-Th, 10-4 and by appointment. Closed March 9-12 for Spring Break
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Resilience + Adaptation highlights the work of ten Middle Tennessee visual artists engaging with the complementary concepts of resilience—a perspective concerned with systemic change, capacity-building, and recovery—and adaptation—incremental and transformational actions that aid communities locally and globally in adjusting to the reality of climate change. Spanning media including photography, painting, and sculpture, Resilience + Adaptation engages with these themes through sustainable materials and processes; formal and representational choices; critical and intersectional perspectives on climate change; and galvanizing communities facing the impact of climate change through ar.
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February 14 to May 10, 2026
304 Cohen Memorial Hall
1220 21st Avenue South
Nashville, TN 37212Monday: CLOSED Tuesday-Friday: 11am-4pm Saturday-Sunday: 12pm-5pm, Closed during Spring Break (March 7 - 15, 2026)
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Woven Wind is a multi-layered research project drawing from artistic translations of the Lovell Quitman archive, which includes extensive Quitman Plantation records and photographs of the Civil War era. In a time of social and racial reckoning and division in the U.S., Woven Windconstructs an artistic platform for education, conversation, empathy, and healing. Its artistic team includes artists Vesna Pavlović, Courtney Adair Johnson, Marlos E’van, community advocate Mélisande Short-Colomb, musician/artist Rod McGaha, genealogist Jan Hillegas, and historian Woody Register, director of the Roberson Project on Slavery, Race and Reconciliation at the University of the South. Archival research studio and field work, community engagement, genealogical findings, and conversations with the descendants inform the project.
Image (above): Vesna Pavlović, Monmouth, archival pigment print, 2025
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Print Show
Jan 10- Feb 26, 2026
Downtown Presbyterian Church, 154 5th Ave N. Nashville TN 37219
Saturday February 14 - Nashville DADA Downtown Arts District Art Crawl. Other times by appointment with the church office.
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Print Fair features socially engaged prints that celebrate the democratic nature of printmaking and its capacity to spark dialogue and collective imagination. The exhibition honors the spirit of printmaking—artworks that are reproducible, accessible, and rooted in community. Unlike singular works that often remain out of reach, prints encourage broad artistic participation and offer collectors and viewers an approachable entry point into contemporary art. This openness makes printmaking a natural fit for church-based galleries grounded in inclusion, reflection, and service. Print Fair advances that mission by expanding artists’ networks while offering the broader community meaningful, affordable creative work
Ellen Campbel, Charles Chalot Douglas-Book, Ahmed Eldarrat, Micha Fessler, Eliza Frensley, Keeton Holder, Margaret Keller, Hope Kise, Bryce McCloud, Zachary Millner, Ashley Mintz, Kenya Mitchell, Adrienne Outlaw, Mo Overholt, Barbara Sherman, Amy Travis, Patrick Vincent, Dianna Walters-Hartley, Rebecca Willhoft, Ripley Whiteside, Janet Decker Yanez, Ashleigh York.