The Body is a Drum, The Voice a Song, The Soul a Fire Opening Reception

• 5:30 pm Members Only Hour
• 5:45 pm Artist Dialogue with Tabatha Arnold and Dianna Settles
  Moderated by KMA Assistant Curator Kelsie Conley
• 6:30 pm Reception Opens to Non-Members
• 7:00 pm + 8:00 pm Performances by The Knox Honkers and Bangers
  A Program Under Cattywampus Puppet Council
• Hors d’oeuvres + Cupcakes from Magpies Bakery
• Cash Bar + Specialty Beverage

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION—

The Body is a Drum, The Voice a Song, The Soul a Fire  brings together the work of Tabitha Arnold, Dianna Settles, and Lewis Hine— artists who call attention to the lives shaped by labor: its intimacies, its struggles, its persistence. Arnold’s tapestries weave together a history of labor movements in the Southeast, Settles’ paintings reveal the collective heartbeat where everyday life and organizing work meet, and Hine’s photographs capture the daily realities and inequities of industrial labor in early 20th-century East Tennessee. The exhibition draws from the audio archives of the Highlander Center, a wellspring of resistance that has preserved the music and voices of labor organizers, civil rights leaders, and the people who built this country with their hands. These images and sounds, both past and present, are not just records of labor, but testaments to the histories that shape us still.

FREE and open to the public!

IMAGE (LEFT TO RIGHT): Dianna Settles, Hundredth Repetition, After High Noon, 2025, acrylic and colored pencil on panel, 24 x 32 inches; Dianna Settles, Hundredth Repetition, After High Noon, 2025, acrylic and colored pencil on panel, 24 x 32 inches; Lewis Hine photographs are courtesy of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) on permanent loan to the Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, Tennessee; Tabitha Arnold, Mill Town, 2024. Punch-needle-embroidered wool yarn on linen backing, mounted on wood and brass banner poles. Courtesy the artist