The Knoxville Museum of Art (KMA), is an art museum in
Knoxville, Tennessee
Knoxville is a city in and the county seat of Knox County, Tennessee, Knox County in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 United States census, Knoxville's population was 190,740, making it the largest city in the East Tennessee Grand Di ...
. It specializes in historical and contemporary art pieces from the
East Tennessee
East Tennessee is one of the three Grand Divisions of Tennessee defined in state law. Geographically and socioculturally distinct, it comprises approximately the eastern third of the U.S. state of Tennessee. East Tennessee consists of 33 count ...
region. According to its mission statement, the museum "celebrates the art and artists of
East Tennessee
East Tennessee is one of the three Grand Divisions of Tennessee defined in state law. Geographically and socioculturally distinct, it comprises approximately the eastern third of the U.S. state of Tennessee. East Tennessee consists of 33 count ...
, presents new art and new ideas, educates and serves a diverse community, enhances Knoxville’s quality of life, and operates ethically, responsibly, and transparently as a public trust."
[About the Knoxville Museum of Art]
," Knoxville Museum of Art official website. Retrieved: 5 January 2015.
History
The museum opened in 1961 as the Dulin Gallery of Art, which was housed in the H.L. Dulin House on Kingston Pike. The Dulin House was designed in 1915 by prominent architect
John Russell Pope
John Russell Pope (April 24, 1874 – August 27, 1937) was an American architect whose firm is widely known for designing major public buildings, including the National Archives and Records Administration building (completed in 1935), the Jeffe ...
in the
Neoclassical Revival
Neoclassical architecture is an architectural style produced by the Neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century in Italy and France. It became one of the most prominent architectural styles in the Western world. The prevailing style ...
style. The house had limited space, however, and the lack of security and climate control prevented the museum's accreditation by the
American Association of Museums
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
. In 1984, the Board of Trustees voted to build a new facility at the site of
1982 World's Fair
The 1982 World's Fair, officially known as the Knoxville International Energy Exposition (KIEE) and simply as Energy Expo '82 and Expo '82, was an international exposition held in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. Focused on energy and ele ...
in downtown Knoxville. The name was changed to "Knoxville Museum of Art" in 1987. The new facility, designed by noted architect
Edward Larrabee Barnes
Edward Larrabee Barnes (April 22, 1915 – September 22, 2004) was an American architect. His work was characterized by the "fusing fModernism with vernacular architecture and understated design." Barnes was best known for his adherence to ...
, opened on March 25, 1990.
[Lucy Adard Seay,]
Knoxville Museum of Art
" ''Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture''. Retrieved: 5 January 2015.
Building
The
Edward Larrabee Barnes
Edward Larrabee Barnes (April 22, 1915 – September 22, 2004) was an American architect. His work was characterized by the "fusing fModernism with vernacular architecture and understated design." Barnes was best known for his adherence to ...
-designed
modern
Modern may refer to:
History
* Modern history
** Early Modern period
** Late Modern period
*** 18th century
*** 19th century
*** 20th century
** Contemporary history
* Moderns, a faction of Freemasonry that existed in the 18th century
Phil ...
building is named in honor of
Jim Clayton, the largest single contributor to its construction. The exterior of the four-story steel and concrete building is sheathed in locally quarried pink
Tennessee marble
Tennessee marble is a type of crystalline limestone found only in East Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. Long esteemed by architects and builders for its pinkish-gray color and the ease with which it is polished, this stone has been ...
. The museum includes five galleries and two large outdoor garden areas. In 2013 and 2014, the museum underwent a comprehensive, top-to-bottom restoration and renovation at a cost of nearly $6 million. The building’s Tennessee marble cladding was cleaned and restored, and the entry plaza and third floor terrace were rebuilt and repaved with pink and gray Vermont granite. The North Garden was also redesigned and planted with native trees and shrubs.
Collection
In its early years the museum focused mostly on ambitious traveling exhibitions. Its collection and programming has since evolved to focus increasingly on Southern
Appalachia
Appalachia () is a cultural region in the Eastern United States that stretches from the Southern Tier of New York State to northern Alabama and Georgia. While the Appalachian Mountains stretch from Belle Isle in Newfoundland and Labrador, Ca ...
n culture and artists from the East Tennessee region. ''Higher Ground: A Century of the Visual Arts in East Tennessee'' is a permanent exhibition that highlights the works of noted native artists such as
Lloyd Branson
Enoch Lloyd Branson (1853–1925) was an American artist best known for his portraits of Southern politicians and depictions of early East Tennessee history.
One of the most influential figures in Knoxville's early art circles, Branson rec ...
,
Catherine Wiley
Anna Catherine Wiley (January 18, 1879 – May 16, 1958) was an American artist active primarily in the early twentieth century. After training with the Art Students League of New York and receiving instruction from artists such as Lloyd Bran ...
,
Joseph Delaney
Joseph Henry Delaney (25 July 1945 – 16 August 2022) was an English author, known for his dark fantasy series ''Spook's''. He started his career as a teacher and wrote science fiction and fantasy novels for adults under the pseudonym J. K. H ...
,
Beauford Delaney
Beauford Delaney (December 30, 1901 – March 26, 1979) was an American modernist painter. He is remembered for his work with the Harlem Renaissance in the 1930s and 1940s, as well as his later works in abstract expressionism following his move ...
, and
Bessie Harvey, as well as major artists from outside the region who produced significant work in the Knoxville area, such as
Ansel Adams
Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association of photographers advoca ...
and
Elliot Porter.
Another permanent exhibition, ''Currents: Recent Art from East Tennessee and Beyond'', is part of the museum’s effort to introduce new art and new ideas. It features works from a wide range of artists, including
Gordon Cheung,
Ori Gersht,
Red Grooms
Red Grooms (born Charles Rogers Grooms on June 7, 1937) is an American multimedia artist best known for his colorful pop art, pop-art constructions depicting frenetic scenes of modern urban life. Grooms was given the nickname "Red" by Dominic ...
,
Wade Guyton
Wade Guyton (born 1972) is an American post-conceptual artist who among other things makes digital paintings on canvas using scanners and digital inkjet technology.
Early life and education
Guyton was born in Hammond, Indiana, in 1972, and grew ...
,
Robert Longo
Robert Longo (born 1953) is an American artist, filmmaker, photographer and musician.
Longo became first well known in the 1980s for his ''Men in the Cities'' drawing and print series, which depict sharply dressed men and women writhing in cont ...
,
Loretta Lux
Loretta Lux (born 1969) is a fine art photographer known for her surreal portraits of young children. She lives and works in Ireland.
Life and work
Lux was born in Dresden, East Germany. She graduated from the Academy of Visual Arts in Munich ...
,
William Morris
William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was a British textile designer, poet, artist, novelist, architectural conservationist, printer, translator and socialist activist associated with the British Arts and Crafts Movement. He ...
,
Ulf Puder
Ulf Puder, born 1958 in Leipzig, is a German painter. He is educated at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig
The Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst (HGB) or Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig is one of the oldest art schools in Germany, ...
,
Hiraki Sawa Hiraki (written: or ) is a Japanese surname. Notable people with the surname include:
*, Japanese politician
*, Japanese sport wrestler
*, Japanese table tennis player
*, Japanese footballer and manager
*, Japanese footballer
See also
*Hiraki Sta ...
,
Kenneth Snelson
Kenneth Duane Snelson (June 29, 1927 – December 22, 2016) was an American contemporary sculptor and photographer. His sculptural works are composed of flexible and rigid components arranged according to the idea of 'tensegrity'. Snelson prefer ...
,
Robert Stackhouse
Robert Stackhouse (born 1942 in Bronxville, New York, United States) is an American artist and sculptor.
Stackhouse graduated with a bachelor's degree from the University of South Florida in 1965. He later earned a master's degree at the Univ ...
, and
Anne Wilson. A new permanent exhibition of modern and contemporary studio glass highlights a collection area growing in strength, with important works by
Harvey Littleton
Harvey Littleton (June 14, 1922 – December 13, 2013) was an American glass artist and educator, one of the founders of the studio glass movement; he is often referred to as the "Father of the Studio Glass Movement". Born in Corning, New Yor ...
,
Karen LaMonte
Karen LaMonte (born December 14, 1967) is an American artist known for her life-size sculptures in ceramic, bronze, marble, and cast glass.
Background
LaMonte was born and grew up in Manhattan, New York. In 1990, after she graduated from the Rhod ...
,
Andrew Erdos, and William Morris. In the Spring of 2014, the museum unveiled a permanent glass installation
Richard Jolley, ''Cycle of Life: Within the Power of Dreams and the Wonder of Infinity.'' Made possible by a gift from Ann and Steve Bailey, it is the largest figural glass installation in the world.
The museum has a collection of nine
Thorne miniature rooms
The Thorne miniature rooms are a set of approximately 100 miniature models of rooms created between 1932 and 1940 under the direction of Narcissa Niblack Thorne. Ninety-nine of the rooms are believed still to be in existence; the majority (68) ar ...
. The rooms are notable miniatures, designed by
Narcissa Niblack Thorne
Narcissa Niblack Thorne (May 2, 1882 – June 25, 1966) was an American artist known for her extremely detailed miniature rooms. Her works depict historical interiors from Europe, Asia and North America from the late 13th to the early 20th ce ...
in the 1930s and 1940s. The largest collection of Thorne miniature rooms is located at the
Art Institute of Chicago
The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 mill ...
.
Knoxville Museum of Art's Thorne Rooms
Knoxville Museum of Art official website. Retrieved: 5 January 2015.
Exhibitions
The museum supplements and complements its core permanent installations with a lively schedule of temporary exhibitions that explore aspects of regional culture and its relation to national and international artistic developments. The museum has featured solo exhibitions by contemporary artists such as Anne Wilson, Jun Kaneko
is a Japanese-born American ceramic artist known for creating large scale ceramic sculpture. Based out of a studio warehouse in Omaha, Nebraska, Kaneko primarily works in clay to explore the effects of repeated abstract surface motifs by using ...
, Candida Höfer
Candida Höfer (born 4 February 1944) is a German photographer. She is a former student of Bernd and Hilla Becher. Like other Becher students, Höfer's work is known for technical perfection and a strictly conceptual approach. From 1997 to 2000, ...
, Maya Lin
Maya Ying Lin (born October 5, 1959) is an American designer and sculptor. In 1981, while an undergraduate at Yale University, she achieved national recognition when she won a national design competition for the planned Vietnam Veterans Memoria ...
, Jim Campbell, Anton Vidokle
Anton Vidokle is an artist and founder of e-flux. Born 1965, Vidokle lives in New York and Berlin.
Work
In 2004 Vidokle co-organized e-flux video rental with Julieta Aranda, which traveled to Berlin, Frankfurt; Extra City, Antwerp; Carpenter Cent ...
, Johanna Billing
Johanna Billing (born 1973) is a Swedish artist. Her work has been featured in major group exhibitions such as Dokumenta 12, Istanbul Biennial (2005) and the 50th Venice Biennale.
Life and work
Johanna Billing was born 1973 in Jönköping
...
, Eva Zeisel
Eva Striker Zeisel (born Éva Amália Striker, November 13, 1906 – December 30, 2011) was a Hungarian-born American industrial designer known for her work with ceramics, primarily from the period after she immigrated to the United States. Her f ...
, Chuck Close
Charles Thomas Close (July 5, 1940 – August 19, 2021) was an American painter, visual artist, and photographer who made massive-scale photorealist and abstract portraits of himself and others. Close also created photo portraits using a very l ...
, and Ai Weiwei
Ai Weiwei (, ; born 28 August 1957) is a Chinese contemporary artist, documentarian, and activist. Ai grew up in the far northwest of China, where he lived under harsh conditions due to his father's exile. As an activist, he has been openly c ...
.
The museum also has an ongoing interest in the creation of first solo museum shows for promising new artists, both from the region and from further afield. The KMA has organized solo exhibitions of work by artists such as Liz Collins, Tam Van Tran
Tam Van Tran (born 1966) is a visual artist born in Vietnam who lives and works in Los Angeles, California. His primary materials for paintings and sculptures include clay and paper, and extend to chlorophyll, glass, algae, staples, crushed eggshel ...
, Oliver Payne and Nick Relph Oliver Payne and Nick Relph are British artist-filmmakers who have collaborated since 1999. Payne was born in 1977, and Relph in 1979. Both studied at Kingston University, London. Payne failed his undergraduate Intermedia course in 2000, and Relph w ...
, Clare Rojas
Clare E. Rojas (born 1976), also known by stage name Peggy Honeywell, is an American multidisciplinary artist. She is part of the Mission School. Rojas is "known for creating powerful folk-art-inspired tableaus that tackle traditional gender role ...
, Sarah Hobbs, Michael Raedecker
Michael Raedecker (born 12 May 1963) is a Dutch artist who works in the United Kingdom.
Raedecker was born in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. From 1985 to 1990 he studied fashion design at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, and then, fr ...
, Timothy Horn
Timothy is a masculine name. It comes from the Greek name ( Timόtheos) meaning "honouring God", "in God's honour", or "honoured by God". Timothy (and its variations) is a common name in several countries.
People Given name
* Timothy (given name) ...
, Seonna Hong, and Tomory Dodge
Tomory Dodge is an American artist. He graduated from the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California, in 2004. Before that, he had a solo show at the Taxter & Spengemann gallery in New York. He paints landscapes with a Surrealist i ...
.
General
The KMA has an educational focus. Programming includes: museum tours, workshops, artist residencies, outreach programs, lectures, concerts, classroom programs, and family activities. The KMA reaches over 60,000 people annually through museum visits, special events, concerts and other programs. Its approximately $1.7 million annual operating budget comes from individual and corporate donors, museum memberships, rental income, local, state, and federal government grants, endowments, and annual fundraising events. The KMA was accredited by the American Alliance of Museums in 1996 and reaccredited in 2005.
Gallery
File:KMA Knox.jpg, East facade and grounds
Image:Knoxville Museum of Art Higher Ground.jpg, Gallery space
Image:Knoxville Museum of Art Gallery 1.jpg, Gallery space
References
* ''Knoxville: Fifty Landmarks.'' (Knoxville: The Knoxville Heritage Committee of the Junior League of Knoxville, 1976).
External links
*
{{authority control
Museums in Knoxville, Tennessee
Art museums and galleries in Tennessee
Arts centers in Tennessee
Contemporary art galleries in the United States
Modern art museums in the United States
Art museums established in 1961
1961 establishments in Tennessee
Edward Larrabee Barnes buildings
World's fair sites in the United States