MIDDLE

Nashville
Highlight Events

The highlight events will include receptions and celebrations at select participating venues.

Nashville host Museum
In Her Place: Nashville Artists in the Twenty-First Century
January 29 to April 26, 2026
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.

Seeds from Svalbard
February 9 - March 6
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.