WEST
Memphis
Highlight Events
September 23 - 27, 2026
The highlight events will include receptions and celebrations at select participating venues.
MEMPHIS
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In May of 2020, the Memphis College of Art (MCA) graduated its last class of students, ending an illustrious 84-year history of contributing to the creative, economic, and cultural flourishing of the city of Memphis. In addition to being a touchstone for the regional arts community, MCA graduates ventured across the country and around the world where they nurtured their own careers as well as inspired generations of others through teaching. The college’s history is intimately tied not only to the city but also to the Brooks Memorial Art Gallery, today the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.
Florence McIntyre played a role in founding both institutions, including in their organization, professionalization, and success. It is therefore fitting that the final exhibition the museum mounts in its original home in Overton Park is a celebration of its sister organization’s august history. Through this exhibition of 90 faculty, administrators, and graduates who represent the institution's diversity, Remembering the Memphis College of Art, 1936-2020 highlights the school’s success in educating and fostering artists. Featured are ninety works across a range of media spanning the school’s history and is organized into groupings of faculty and their students. The exhibition is an opportunity to reflect on the historical impact of the college as well as celebrate its continued legacy regionally and beyond.
The exhibition includes work by Mario Bacchelli, Brin Baucum, Dale Baucum, Kim Beck, Tootsie Bell, Peter Bowman, Cynthia Bringle, Bunny Burson, Fred Burton, Burton Callicott, Karen Carrier, Nancy Cheairs, Martha Christian, Funlola Coker, Michael Coppage, Jay Crum, Beth Dary, Maritza Dávila Irizarry, Alonzo Davis, Patrick DeGuira, Carol DeForest, Don DuMont, Henry Easterwood, Thorne Edwards, Biff Elrod, Ted Faiers, Annette Fournet, Lurlynn Franklin, Moko Fukuyama, Ahmad George, Betty Gilow, Luther Hampton, Rob Hart, Adam Hawk, Michael Hayes, Randy Hayes, Pinkney Herbert, Sharon Havelka, Kyle Holland, Amy Hutcheson, Gere Kavanaugh, J. D. Kelly, Tommy Kha, Tom Lee, Phillip Lewis, James Little, Susan Maakestad, Kate Madison, John McIntire, Emily Miller, Remy Miller, Carl E. Moore, Haley Morris-Cafiero, Joe Morzuch, Floyd Newsum, Michele Noiset, Laurie Nye, George Oberteuffer, Kong Wee Pang, Fidencio Fifield Perez, Ed Perry, Melinda Eckley Posey, Richard Prillaman, Ed Rainey, Veda Reed, Sheri Fleck Rieth, Robert Riseling, Murray Riss, Ebet Roberts, Marc Rouillard, Ted Rust, Jennifer Sargent, Jeanne Seagle, Elizabeth Sheehan, Vitus Shell, Martina Shenal, Allison Read Smith, Dolph Smith, Peter Sohngen, Dorothy Sturm, Cynthia Thompson, Carroll Todd, Martha Turner, Leandra Urrutia, George Wardlaw, D'Angelo Lovell Williams, Sean Winfrey, Jill Wissmiller, Bill Womack, and Tad Lauritzen Wright.
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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.