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Past Exhibitions

	Muted Belles Revisited: CASEWORKS Opening Reception: March 7, 5:30 pm – 7 pm, UM Art Museum lobby Muted Belles Revisited: A Conversation Celebrating Women's Lives Featuring Drs. Beverly Bond, Janann Sherman, Peggy Caffrey & Christine Eisel, History Dept and Leslie Luebbers, UM Art Museum. More here.
	30th Annual Juried Student Exhibition Michelle Foster in ArtLab Juror - Haejung Lee February 2 through March 16 Claustrophobia Shelter is aimed to impart senses of security and claustrophobia simultaneously. Much like an umbrella protects from the rain but restricts full access to the world, the installation is protective and obtrusive. This installation aims to jar notions of spatial relation, shelter, and security. More here.
	30th Annual Juried Student Exhibition Juror - Haejung Lee February 2 through March 16 More here.
	Elisha Gold: Are We Human or Are We Dancers? CASEWORKS February 2 through March 16 My work begins when I discover an intriguing ready-made object. I then combine it with human characteristics and forged metal objects to create a bio-mechanical narrative. I cannot escape the mechanical aspect of the body. Through dance the mechanics of motions become visual metaphors of the human experience. In my work I express the relationshipof soul and machine working as one. More here.
	Rock Doctors: Clare Torina and Stephen Almond in CASEWORKS September 22 through January 12 CFA Lobby Five of this imprisonment with the relationship between the common interests of man and woman both images and objects. Cooperation between Esteban and Clara extend to other artists, sculpture, painting, installation of small-scale exposure... Translated through five languages back to English.Both Torina and Almond attended the University of Memphis. This exhibition marks their third public collaboration. Read more here.
	Museum Studies Exhibition: Art(ifact) December 1, 2012 through January 5, 2012 Opening reception Friday, November 30, 5 to 7:30pm Students in the Museum Studies Program investigate the idea of art and artifact using objects from AMUM's collection. Read more here.
	MFA Thesis Exhibition: Brian Edward Bundren, Jennifer Burton, Katie Maish, Kathleen Murray December 1, 2012 – January 5, 2013 Opening reception: Friday, November 30, 5 to 7:30 PM Brian Bundren Brian Bundren's current work is about the physical properties and symbolic usage of wood. The unique grain lines, knotholes and tonal shifts found in each wooden object within his paintings are rendered in rich detail. Symbolically, the wooden forms stand as representations of human flaws. RSVP (RETIRED PAGE) Read more here.
	Hot Cold Cool September 22 through January 5 Hot Cold Cool presents late 20th century art from four fine art print portfolios in AMUM's collection. "Ten Works by Ten Artists" published in 1964 includes silkscreens by iconic American Minimalist and Pop artists. By contrast, the portfolio "American Artists and Writers Protest the War in Vietnam" of 1967 expresses furious political antagonism. "Ten Lithographs by Ten Artists" produced in 1971 represents a return to figurative and expressive imagery in America. The 1973 World Print portfolio demonstrates the liveliness of the artistic interchange among nations during the Cold War era. RSVP (RETIRED PAGE) Read more here. Press.
	Jan Hankins: 11 SEPTEMBERS September 22 through November 21 Eleven years ago Jan Hankins installed "Out of the Janitor's Closet" in ArtLab. He continues his commentary on American politics with this installation of painting and sculpture—a timely topic in an election year. MORE HERE
	MFA By the Fire of Satire: Russian Propaganda Prints September 22 through November 21 The genre of satirical posters, an important tool of the Soviet government, ridiculed corruption, waste, inefficiency, and abuse attempting to shame individuals into improvement. Agriculture, considered the most wasteful branch of the Soviet economy and the Achilles heel of the former Soviet Union, was the topic for many of the posters in this portfolio. MORE HERE
	Alma Mater: University of Memphis June 16 through September 15 "What do you think the University could be?" That was the question artists Sheryl Oring and Dhanraj Emanuel asked students of The University of Memphis for the 100 year centennial celebration. Funded by The Student Activity Fee Fund. MORE HERE
	MFA Thesis Exhibition: Stripped Spring 2012 Featuring:Ginger Frye, Candace Hitt, Christian Mitchell, Benjamin Netterville, Chris Wallace, Andrew James Williams MORE HERE
	Memories: Richard Knowles and Steve Langdon October 8, 2011 - January 7, 2012 Memories celebrated the life and work of both professors and artists. It showed more than 20 of Knowles’ large-scale abstract paintings, including work from the Swimmers, Southwest, and Forest series, and about 30 of Langdon’s small, carefully rendered ink and pencil drawings from five series, including Ritual Surgery, Cats in Trouble, Fireworks, Baseball Gloves, and Angels. MORE HERE
	Memphis Heavyweight: Collaboration with Nick Cave July 18 - September 28, 2011 Memphis Heavyweight was a project organized by AMUM that brought Chicago artist Nick Cave to Memphis. Cave worked in collaboration with University students and faculty, and the Memphis community at large, to create a parade that occurred on April 21, 2011. The exhibition featured video footage and photographs along with costumes, floats, and other artifacts from the parade. MORE HERE
	Paul Revere Williams, American Architect October 2010 - January 2011 Paul Revere Williams, American Architect was the first museum exhibition of the prolific and acclaimed 20th century designer’s work.The exhibition featured 200 new photographs presented as photographic essays, that profiled the development of his career by decade. Additionally, slide shows of found photographs and text were used to shed light on various aspects of both his personal and professional life. Visit PaulRWilliamsProject.org to learn more about the exhibition and the Paul Revere Williams Project. MORE HERE
	Art Is My Natural World: Alison Weld, 1980 - 2009 March 6 - April 17, 2010 A survey of the past two decades of work by New York abstract painter Alison Weld. Weld typically pairs her aggressive approach to abstraction with swatches of commercially printed patterns to comment on a host of issues and personal concerns. Download the virtual exhibition catalog to view images and read an essay about her work. MORE HERE
	Greely Myatt and Exactly Twenty Years September - November 2009 A mid-career retrospective consisting of approximately twenty years of work by Memphis sculptor and University of Memphis professor, Greely Myatt. Myatt's work combines art historical reference with the vernacular influence of the South to create various narrative possibilities. MORE HERE
	Bonnie Baxter: Rewind November 2008 - January 2009 Baxter's work acts as a semi-autobiographical translation of life, finding beauty in the everyday, and seeing the extraordinary as common. Her installation at AMUM consisted of multimedia towers that displayed fragments of past works combined with sound and large-scale still images. See photos from the exhibition MORE HERE
	Margaret Cogswell: Mississippi River Fugees September - November, 2008 Margaret Cogswell is a native Memphian who now lives and works in New York. Her recent large-scale installations are based around the historical connotations of American rivers. In this installation, industrial structures were modified to act as vessels for display of digital video and sound. Videos of cotton production and flickering candles within lanterns were coupled with the sounds of the Mississippi river, and to poetically retell the story of our region. MORE HERE
	Sitting Still: Contemplative and Creative Responses to Our World February 23 - Aprill 12, 2008 This exhibition featured the results of a collaborative project conceived by artist and Syracuse University professor Anne Beffel. The collaboration consisted of a long-distance video exchange between art students from the University of Memphis, students at Syracuse, and Beffel herself. She encouraged students to sit still and take in the world around them, then take a stationary video of their surroundings. Each video was presented side by side in a gallery environment that recreated the original quiet places of contemplation.
	Crossing the BLVD: strangers, neighbors, aliens in a new America August 27 - November 10, 2007 "Crossing the BLVD" was a traveling exhibition created by documentary artists Warren Lehrer and Judith Sloan recorded the lives and back-stories of of their neighbors in Queens, NY. The final result was an organic multimedia exhibition of photographs, individual portraits, first-person accounts, and music recording the ever-shifting lives of new immigrants and refugees changing American culture in the 21st century.
	Accidental Mysteries: Vernacular Photography from the Collection of John & Tenuh Foster September 16 - October 28, 2006 This exhibit featured over 65 photographs from the vast collection of John and Teenuh Foster. These "vernacular" images -- old snapshots scavenged from antique shops, flea markets, online auctions, etc -- tell the partial stories of their anonymous creators, fused with new meanings each viewer brings to them. Most of the photos were presented in their original form, with a few that were digitally enlarged to emphasize their narrative qualities. MORE INFO
	Three Paths to Abstraction July 15 - September 9, 2006 Three Paths to Abstraction featured the work of three abstract painters from Tennessee: Pinkney Herbert, Whitney Leland, and Carol Mode. Herbert's work Herbert's paintings visually referenced the color, form, and transformative qualities of fire to investigate personal memories and current world events. Leland used overlapping forms and bright color to simultaneously elicit a sense of chaos and order. Mode layered seemingly unfamiliar shapes to map circumstances of a specific time and place in her life. These three artists exemplify the diversity, passion, and optimistic qualities of contemporary abstraction.
	Red Grooms: Selections from the Graphic Work March 4 - April 15, 2006 An exhibition created by the Tennessee State Museum that surveyed the graphic printmaking of Red Grooms, one of America's most well-known artists. Grooms grew up in Nashville TN, and went on to live and work in Chicago and New York. Nashville is where developed the grasp of folk visual language and sympathetic sense of humor he is known for. Red Grooms' prints show us a contrary side of his work; They reveal his patience, precision, and dedication to perfecting a difficult craft.
	Lindsey Obermeyer: "Red Thread: Visible and Invisible" October 22 - December 17, 2005 Red Thread: Visible and Invisible was an exhibition of works by Fibers artist Lindsey Obermeyer. Additionally, the exhibit featured various documentation from The Red Thread Project, a collaborative effort between herself and Memphis area Knitters and Fiber artists. Over 200 gathered for a performance on campus, wearing self-knitted hats connected by a single woven cord of red thread. Afterwards, the hats were disconnected and donated to MIFA.
	*MAX 2005: The Inner Voice of Art* June 24- September 3, 2005 MAX 2005 was the last in a series of biannual exhibitions organized by AMUM, in collaboration with Delta Axis. MAX 05 was curated by David Moos, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario. The exhibition featured 21 artists from Memphis and surrounding areas, as well as two artists from outside the region who Moos felt furthered the exhibit and it's theme. Featured Artists: Kayce Bayer, Christine Conley, Hamlett Dobbins, Grier Edmundson, Dhanraj Emanuel, Jean Flint, Pinkney Herbert, Jeanine Jablonski, Keren Liebembuk Kroul, Amber McGregor, Ian Lemmonds, Annebelle Meacham (Senatobia, MS), Dusty Mitchell (Jonesboro, AR), Greely Myatt, Cedar Nordbye, Virginia Overton, Bill Rowe, Robin Salant, Bonnie Tate, Emily Walls and Niles Wallace, along with Radcliffe Bailey(Atlanta, GA) , and Amy Pleasant (Birmingham, AL).
	buildingstudio + Coleman Coker: Parts Seen Within the Background of a Whole March 5 - April 16, 2005 Parts Seen Within the Background of a Whole consisted of two site-specific installations concieved for AMUM by buildingstudio, a local architecture firm established by Coleman Coker, in partnership with students of art and architecture at the University of Memphis. The installations adressed dualities such as inside/outside, nature made/human made, and cause/effect to thematically explore how humans build their surrounding environment.
	Coming Home! Self-Taught Artists, the Bible, and the American South June 19 - November 13, 2004 Coming Home! was an exhibition organized by AMUM that featured featured 122 works by 73 folk artists from the American South. It examined the art of these “unschooled” vernacular painters and sculptors, who make work inspired by evangelical Christianity, and it’s cultural presence in the region. Coming Home! aimed to interpret this art with regards to its theological, cultural, and historical complexities. In addition to AMUM, the exhibit was also shown at the Florida State University Museum of Fine Art, and the Museum of Biblical Art in New York City. A book by the same title was published to accompany the exhibit, and is available for purchase on Amazon. MORE HERE
	Christopher Cook: against the grain March 13 - April 17, 2004 Against the Grain was an exhibition of graphite drawings by British artist Christopher Cook, who was previously more known for his mature style of painting. These seemingly abstract drawings actually referenced grains of Carbon. Cook focused on the unpredictable nature of the element, and the possible significance of this. The drawings translate this focus, and convey a message concerning the complex relationship between humankind and the natural world.

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Monday – Saturday, 9 am to 5 pm
except between temporary exhibits
and on University holidays.
142 CFA Building
Memphis, TN 38152
Phone: (901) 678-2224
Fax: (901) 678-5118
artmuseum@memphis.edu