Arts

Gilbert Gaul, late nineteenth-century artist, is best known for his depictions of military topics, particularly scenes of the Civil War. Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, he entered the National Academy of Design in New York City at age seventeen…

Shelbyville's historic Gilliland House is a unique vernacular stone building completed by locally renowned African American stone mason James S. "Jim" Gilliland in the late nineteenth century. Born near Shelbyville on November 15, 1858, Gilliland began as a builder of…

Born in Nashville in 1937, Red Grooms emerged in the 1960s to become one of the most important figures in the world of contemporary American art. He has captivated audiences with a creative genius that has expressed itself through a…

Associated with the American Symbolist movement of the late nineteenth century, artist Carl Gutherz was born in Schoeftland, Switzerland, in 1844 and immigrated to Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1851. His family settled in Memphis about 1860, where they remained throughout the…

Painter and portraitist Avery Handly was born in Nashville and graduated from Wallace University School and Vanderbilt University, where he majored in English and was influenced by the Fugitives. His first art instruction, at age twelve, was from Miss Emma…

Born near Guntown, Itawamba County, Mississippi, Cornelius H. Hankins was the sixth of eight children of Reverend Edward Locke Hankins and Annie Mary McFadden Hankins. He contracted smallpox after his mother cared for Confederate soldiers. As a result, he was…

Using little more than roots, shells, and paint, visionary artist Bessie Harvey assembled a diverse cast of figures that appeared vividly before her mind’s eye. Biblical characters, African ancestors, mythological creatures, and episodes from African American history materialized under her…

Painter of portraits and still lifes, Ella S. Hergesheimer was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Elamanda Ritter and Charles Patterson Hergesheimer. Hergesheimer was the direct descendant of Charles Willson Peale, artist and founder of Peale's Museum, part of…

Lewis Hine was an established documentary photographer when Arthur E. Morgan, first chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), approached him to document life in the region. Recognized as a socially concerned photographer, Hine had earlier documented the abusive conditions…

Thomas Hope, one of Tennessee's earliest and finest master carpenters and cabinetmakers, was born in England circa 1757. By 1788 Hope was in Charleston, South Carolina, where his reputation spread to the part of the western North Carolina frontier that…

Built on a ninety-foot limestone bluff overlooking the Tennessee River and housed within a 1904 Classical Revival mansion and contemporary-style 1975 structure, the Hunter Museum of American Art features one of the finest collections of American art in the Southeast.…

From 1978 to 1997, the annual Memphis in May Festival culminated with vocalist James Hyter's performance at the Sunset Symphony. Each year, audiences sang along with Hyter's rendition of the show tune "Ol' Man River" and repeatedly called for encores.…

Bobby Jones, an influential late-twentieth-century gospel music artist and television producer, has played a key role in Nashville's evolution as one of the most important gospel music centers in the United States. He taped his television show, "Bobby Jones Gospel," in Nashville for twenty-five…

An important early twentieth-century sculptor, Belle Kinney graced Nashville with works at the War Memorial Building, the State Capitol, and the Parthenon. Born in Nashville in 1890, one of four children of Captain D. C. and Elizabeth Morrison Kinney, she…

Opened in 1961 as the Dulin Gallery of Art, the Knoxville Museum of Art was originally housed in an early twentieth-century neighborhood mansion designed by noted American architect John Russell Pope. As the museum grew, however, the limitations of the…

Alan LeQuire, the creator of the monumental Athena Parthenos for the Parthenon in Nashville, is one of Tennessee's most accomplished sculptors. He is best known for his public commissions such as the life-size bronze sculptures at Blair School of Music…

An award-winning director of many television and cinema productions, Delbert Mann was born in Kansas in 1920 but grew up in Nashville. In a career that has included 109 live television shows and more than 50 films, Mann has captivated…

Founded as Brooks Memorial Art Gallery in 1916, the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art was the first art museum in Memphis. Initial efforts to build a municipal art museum in Memphis were based upon a design for an arts and…

The Memphis College of Art is the only independent college in the South dually accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) and the National Association of Schools of Art and Design. It opened on October 5, 1936,…

Emma Bell Miles, artist, naturalist, and author of The Spirit of the Mountains (1905) as well as poems, stories, and essays, was born in Evansville, Indiana, on October 19, 1879, to schoolteachers Benjamin Franklin and Martha Ann Mirick Bell. She…