Exhibitions

This annual exhibition is designed to represent the most adventurous work being made by emerging artists living and working in East Tennessee.

This year’s exhibition features Artist John Douglas Powers. Drawing from areas as diverse as natural history, architecture and the history of technology, John Douglas Powers investigates the intersection of cinema, engineering, computation, music and physical space. By employing motion and sound in his work, he incorporates the passage of time as a compositional element in an attempt to examine abstract and often intangible topics such as memory, thought, emotion, and language.

Romantic Spirits features more than 30 nineteenth century masterworks from the renowned Spartanburg, South Carolina-based collection. The paintings present an evocative glimpse into nineteenth-century Southern life, and reveal the importance of oral tradition and “a sense of place” in the development of the Romantic Movement in the South. The exhibition seeks to present a balanced view of how Romanticism evolved in the North and the South, the genre’s ties to Europe, and how culture, customs, education, and travel influenced each artist. It also reveals connections between featured painters and their contemporaries, specifically authors and poets such as Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow among others.

This is a collaborative project with the East Tennessee Art Education Association designed to bring together the best student work grades 6-12 from a 32-county region; award winners are eligible for $1,000,000 in scholarships to national art schools. Organized by the KMA.

Knoxville-based artist Jered Sprecher (born Lincoln, Nebraska 1976) is among a generation of contemporary painters exploring anew the creative territory between figuration and abstraction. He describes himself as a “hunter and gatherer” who draws inspiration from an eclectic array of image sources including graffiti, architecture, cut gemstones, family photographs, and ancient frescoes. From these sources, the artist generates a broad spectrum of creative ideas and compositional possibilities that fuel his studio practice.

Drawn from the extensive Chicago-based collection of Carl and Marilynn Thoma, Virtual Views explores the growing importance of electronic new media in contemporary art as seen in the work of artists who are pioneers in the use of LEDs (light-emitting diodes), LCD (liquid crystal display), and computer-driven imagery.

Gathering Light celebrates the Knoxville Museum of Art’s progress in building a representative collection of works by Knoxville-born Beauford Delaney (1901-1979), considered by many to be among the greatest American abstract painters of the twentieth century. Despite battling poverty, prejudice, and mental illness, Delaney achieved an international reputation for his portraits, scenes of city life, and free-form abstractions marked by intense colors, bold contours, and expressive surfaces. Gathering Light is part of a larger effort to bring long-overdue attention to Delaney’s legacy in his hometown.

This exhibition examines the key role played by artist colonies around the country in the development of American Impressionism. It features more than 50 oil paintings and works on paper dating from the 1880s through the 1940s by leading artists of the movement such as William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam, Ernest Lawson, Julian Alden Weir, John Twachtman, Chauncey Ryder, Frank W. Benson, William Paxton along with expatriate artists such as Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent.

The Knoxville Museum of Art and the Tennessee Art Education Association present the East Tennessee Regional Student Art Exhibition. The East Tennessee Regional Student Art Exhibition is open to students in grades 6-12, attending public, private, or home schools in 32 counties across East Tennessee. The best-in-show winner will receive a purchase award of $500, and the artwork will become a permanent part of the collection of Mr. James Dodson, on loan to the Knoxville Museum of Art's Education Collection. Since 2005, the East Tennessee Regional Student Art Exhibition has presented the work of nearly 4,000 students who have competed for a total of $7 million in scholarships made available to eligible juniors and seniors by colleges and universities from around the nation. This event is made possible by the generosity of presenting sponsor Regal Entertainment Group with additional sponsorship from Home Federal Bank, Pharma Packaging Solutions, Emerson Process Management, and Ann and Steve Bailey.

In 2015, Chicago collectors Helen and Russell Novak made the single largest and most important gift of art to the KMA’s contemporary print collection in the museum’s history. Press Ahead: Contemporary Prints Gifted by Helen and Russell Novak represents the official unveiling of this remarkable gift. The exhibition features 38 works by leading contemporary artists from around the world including Roger Brown, John Buck, Christo, Lesley Dill, Jim Dine, Helen Frankenthaler, Red Grooms, Sol LeWitt, and Barbara Takenaga William T. Wiley, and by younger artists such as Brad Brown, Enrique Chagoya, Tom Huck, Jiha Moon, and Hans Schabus. Some artists are leading printmakers while others work primarily in other media, but became interested in collaborating with master printers in order to realize their ideas in print-based formats. The KMA’s selection includes great examples of each artist’s work, prints produced in small editions, and those representing a broad range of printmaking techniques and formats (including sculptural and book format prints).

Featuring more than 40 paintings from the extensive holdings of the Johnson Collection, Spartanburg, South Carolina, this exhibition examines the history of the Impressionist movement and its influence on art created in and about the American South. Artists represented in the exhibition include Kate Freeman Clark, Elliott Daingerfield, Gilbert Gaul, Alfred Hutty, Rudolph Ingerle, Willie Betty Newman, Alice Huger Smith, William Posey Silva, and Catherine Wiley—several of whom were active in East Tennessee. Organized by the Johnson Collection.

Born in Knoxville to a minister-father, Joseph Delaney (1904-1991) and his brother Beauford (1901-1979) learned to draw on Sunday school cards at church and took art lessons with distinguished local artist Lloyd Branson. Both brothers set out on their own in the 1920s, with Joseph settling in New York by 1930. There he studied with regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton at New York’s Art Students League with a group of classmates that included Jackson Pollock. Delaney spent the next 56 years painting portraits, figure studies, and lively scenes of urban life in lower Manhattan. On the Move will include key works from major segments of Delaney’s career designed to represent the winding path of his artistic journey. A small selection of the artist’s drawings, letters, and poetry will also be included to shed light on aspects of his inner life and creativity. Organized by the KMA.

This collaborative project with the East Tennessee Art Education Association is designed to gather the best student work grades 6-12 from a 32-county region; award winners are eligible for $1,000,000 in scholarships to national art schools. Organized by the KMA.