If you’re looking for a retreat from the heat this summer, the Memphis art scene has you covered — with cool exhibitions, cool performances, and very cool experiences. Just take a look through our 2023 Summer Arts Guide, and you’ll see what we’re talking about.
From Downtown to Whitehaven to Collierville and back, Shelby County’s government wants to make the arts inclusive and accessible to everyone countywide. Earlier this year, the Arts and Culture Nonprofit Subcommittee announced its “Art For All” campaign, a series of free arts and culture experiences. This Sunday, June 25th, marks its flagship Art For All Festival.
The festival will highlight a sample of what Memphis arts and culture organizations have to offer, with a variety of performances, installations, experiences, and more. Attendees can expect an interactive pop-up art gallery from TONE, demonstrations by the Mini Mobile Metal Museum, dance movement therapy from Image Builders Memphis, activities with Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, art activations from Orpheum Theatre and Stax Museum of American Soul Music, and performances by Opera Memphis and Hattiloo Theatre. The Museum of Science & History, the festival venue, will also offer activities linking art and science.
“Art For All [stems from] the fact that we have a multitude of organizations within Memphis and Shelby County with a variety of wonderful offerings that we want to bring awareness to and uplift,” says Nykesha Cole, Shelby County’s arts and culture liaison. “And we want everybody to have the opportunity to have access to arts and culture ’cause, truly, when you look at it, that is one of the most vibrant things in society.”
Museum of Science & History, Sunday, June 25, 11 a.m.-3 p.m., free
Memphis Dance Festival
This September, Collage Dance Collective will host its third Memphis Dance Festival, and already, the organization has confirmed top-notch talent for the day — Memphis’ own Lil Buck, dancers from New York City Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (NYC), Alonzo King LINES Ballet (San Francisco), SOLE Defined tap company (DC), Nashville Ballet, of course Collage Dance Collective, and many more local dance organizations.
“We are really trying to curate something very special so that our community can experience these world-class national artists in their own backyard,” says Marcellus Harper, Collage’s executive director. “That’s meant to really get the community excited about dance and to elevate dance as a powerful transformative art in our community and our city.
“One of the taglines [of the festival] is, ‘Dance is for everyone,’” Harper continues. “So we’re hoping that really resonates throughout the festival, but also this focus on physical well-being, emotional well-being, how we prioritize those things. Whether it’s a physical wellness program or an emotional wellness program, movement is always a big part of that practice, so dance can really be great for the soul and the spirit, too.”
Collage Dance Center, September 16, free
This month, the Metal Museum opened a juried exhibition of 40 works of art from 26 queer-identifying metal artists from across the country. For the exhibition, three jurors — matt lambert, Al Murray, and Memphian Lawrence Matthews — selected pieces they felt spoke to the intersectional spectrum of what it means to be a part of the LGBTQ community.
“Rather than the typical ‘the work looks like it’s queer,’ I think this show also really highlights that there are people from these backgrounds in all areas,” says lambert. “We’re making space for a lot of types of identity that include queerness, but it’s not just that. [The artists in the exhibit] place themselves [along] those spectrums, but for some it was an option to just be themselves, and maybe they don’t want to stress that part of them. Just applying [for the exhibition] already implies that they see themselves as part of this community.”
“[The exhibit] feels like it’s a celebration of LGBTQIA+ people,” adds one of the artists, Funlola Coker, “but it also feels poignant right now, especially given what’s happening not just in Tennessee but around America and the world, and how queer people are being oppressed. It feels really important to keep showing work like this and talking about it and supporting artists who talk about these issues because it’s a more nuanced expression of who we are.”
“We Are Here: LGBTQIA+ Voices in the Contemporary Metals Community” is on display at the Metal Museum through September 10th.
“Zao Wou-Ki: Watercolors and Ceramics”
In 2018, Zao Wou-Ki became the world’s third best-selling artist, after Picasso and Monet, with auctions of the late French-Chinese painter’s work generating $327 million, according to Forbes. Now, he sits at a comfortable 23rd ranking, above names as recognizable as Botticelli, Degas, Renoir, Banksy, O’Keeffe, Manet, Pollock, and Matisse. Yet, as Julie Pierotti, a curator at the Dixon Gallery & Gardens, says, he’s not a household name in the United States. Even so, with its latest exhibit, “Zao Wou-Ki: Watercolors and Ceramics,” the Dixon is hoping to change that, with an impressive display of 80 works in watercolor and on ceramics, all drawn exclusively from European private collections.
Throughout his prolific and successful career, Zao channeled Chinese calligraphy in his abstract expressionist work on canvas, ink on paper, lithography, and engraving, and watercolor, bridging the artistic traditions of the East and the West. However, for the first time, his watercolors will be taking center stage in a museum setting at the Dixon.
“Watercolor [was] a kind of a constant medium for him,” says Pierotti. “He explored watercolor throughout his career, but with a lot of vigor in the last years of his life. He was known really for his oil painting, but these works really are authentic to who he was and what his artistic vision was.”
“For an artist who worked in a variety of media but has this kind of little-known dedication to watercolor, we feel like we’re showing, for those people who knew Zao Wou-Ki before, a different side to his career,” Pierotti adds, “and for those who didn’t know him, it’s a great time to get to know him.”
“Zao Wou-Ki: Watercolors and Ceramics” is on display at the Dixon Gallery & Gardens through July 16th. Accompanying the exhibit is “Susan Maakestad: The Expansive Moment,” on display through July 9th. Admission to the museum is always free.
“Harmonia Rosales: Master Narrative”
At a young age, Harmonia Rosales fell in love with the Renaissance masters who wove tales from Greco-Roman mythology and Christianity in their paintings, but years later when she showed these paintings to her daughter, her daughter didn’t fall in love with them. “She was like, ‘They don’t look like me,’” says Rosales, “It just hit me that I didn’t want her to feel like her hair wasn’t beautiful, her skin wasn’t beautiful.”
And so Rosales took to the canvas to give her daughter the representation she was missing in the Western Renaissance paintings that have been celebrated for centuries. As an Afro-Cuban American, she turned to the Lucumí religion of her ancestors and wove those tales into her paintings, made in the style of the Renaissance paintings that once filled her imagination.
At first, her peers discouraged her from painting these stories centered around African and Black figures in the Renaissance style. Her advisors told her she wouldn’t be able to sell them, but Rosales didn’t care. This work made her happy. “To see us in there, our ancestors, our history in a format where it’s just as time-consuming, looks just like the Renaissance paintings — the priceless paintings, the most beautiful paintings of the world, can’t touch ’em, can’t buy ’em — I wanted to do that in order to empower us and see our history in the same light,” she says. “Inclusion, it’s all about inclusion. Seeing this is what I want for my children.”
Rosales intended these pieces to be public-facing, wanting to reach as broad of an audience as possible, just like the Renaissance masters she reimagines and reinvents. And thanks to the Brooks, she is one step closer to that goal as her first solo museum exhibition, outside of her home state California, opened this spring. Titled “Master Narrative,” the exhibition contains more than 20 breathtaking paintings completed over the past few years and closes this weekend.
“Harmonia Rosales: Master Narrative” is on display at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art through June 25th.
ON DISPLAY
“In the Moment: Art from the 1950s to Now”
Explore paintings, sculptures, and photography from the past 70 years.
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, ongoing
“Build a Heaven of My Own: African American Vernacular Art and the Blues”
This group show explores how the musical and verbal tropes, meaning, and context of the blues not only share traits, but have informed the visual culture of African-American artists from Memphis.
Art Museum at the University of Memphis (AMUM), through June 24
Art at Artvision
Witness over 100 years of combined experience from artists E.P. Simon and Frederick Asbury, featuring works in realism, impressionism, expressionism in painting, drawing, photography, and computer-driven image-making. Guest artist Missy Isely-Poltrock (Kenosha, WI) will show her work through July 4th.
Artvision Fine Art Gallery, 484 N. Hollywood
“Passenger Pigeons and Ecological Tipping Points”
Experience the powerful collage art of local artist Jennalyn Speer, exploring the extinction of passenger pigeons and currently endangered bird species.
Morton Museum of Collierville History, through July 8
“Reimagining the Real: Ana M. Lopez & Natalie Macellaio”
These artists take everyday objects — air-conditioning fixtures, fences, road signs, and construction debris — and transform them into unique works of art as statements about power, privilege, and the environment.
Metal Museum, through July 9
“Susan Maakestad: The Expansive Moment”
Susan Maakestad highlights the marginal spaces of the urban landscape in her watercolors.
Dixon Gallery & Gardens, through July 9
“Paper Palooza”
L Ross Gallery presents a group show of works on paper, featuring work by special guest artists Brantley Ellzey and Ed Hall.
L Ross Gallery, through July 22
“Boys 2 Men (If You Don’t See Black, You Don’t See Me) A Traveling Exhibition”
This show energetically focuses on the diversity of artistic expression within an African-American male pool of visual art creatives in Memphis.
Arkwings, through July 22; Art Museum at the University of Memphis (AMUM), September
“RE(de)FINED”
Johnson Uwadinma’s exhibition reflects on the fraught but integral relationship between humans and nature.
Urevbu Contemporary, through July 31
“Deceive the Heavens to Cross the Seas”
McLean Fahnestock presents videos from his “Stratagem” series, where the sea and sky flip and merge to generate a new, seductive yet false horizon.
Crosstown Arts, through August 6
“Entrances, Exits and the Spaces Betwixt”
Tangela Mathis presents contrasting aspects of personality, showcasing the yin and yang of pneuma.
Crosstown Arts, through August 6
“Edgewise: Exploring Pattern and Rhythm with Line”
Khara Woods presents a collection of paintings, sculpture, and creative devices.
Crosstown Arts, through August 6
“Echoes of Home: Memory and Belonging”
Yangbin Park reflects on his memories of home in this exhibition of prints on hanji paper.
Porch Window Gallery, Studiohouse on Malvern, through August
“Rich Soil”
Created by American artist Kristine Mays, the 29 sculptures in this exhibit are inspired by the movements and gestures of Alvin Ailey’s Revelations.
Memphis Botanic Garden, through October 1
“America at The Crossroads: The Guitar and a Changing Nation”
Explore America’s evolution through the lens of the guitar.
Museum of Science & History, through October 22
“Grind City Picks: The Music That Made Memphis”
Learn about the evolution of notable music genres in Memphis through an impressive display of instruments, band merchandise, and photographs.
Museum of Science & History, through October 22
“Tommy Kha: Eye Is Another”
Photographer Tommy Kha explores themes of identity, (in)visibility, and sense of place in this site-specific installation for the Brooks’ Rotunda.
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, through October 29
2022 Accessions to the Permanent Collection
Take a look at the 24 objects the Metal Museum welcomed into its permanent collection last year.
Metal Museum, through November 12
“The World in Pieces”
Beth Edwards showcases her contemporary still-life paintings, referencing and reinventing historical vanitas paintings with sensuous, metaphorical realism.
David Lusk Gallery, June 27-July 29
“Mud Huts to Paper”
Collierville artist Amruta Bhat offers a contemporary interpretation of the centuries-old practice of Madhubani painting, an ancient Indian folk-art technique.
Morton Museum of Collierville History, July 11-September 9
“Sally Smith: Adrenaline Rush”
Sally Smith’s canvases demonstrate her careful observation of the natural world and deft handling of oil paint.
Dixon Gallery & Gardens, July 11-October 1
“To See With New Eyes, Richard Carr”
Blacksmith Richard Carr uses salvaged local materials to share his love of architecture, organic forms, and the Memphis community in this exhibition.
Metal Museum, July 16-September 24
“American Perspectives: Highlights from the American Folk Art Museum”
This exhibition presents 70 works of art from the collection of the American Folk Art Museum in New York City.
Dixon Gallery & Gardens, July 30-October 8
“Black American Portraits”
The exhibition chronicles the many ways in which Black Americans have used portraiture from 19th-century studio photography to today.
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, August 17-January 7, 2024
“Mary Sims”
David Lusk Gallery presents an exhibition of work by Mary Sims, who was celebrated for her extraordinary, stylized oil paintings based on both real and invented environments.
David Lusk Gallery, September 5-September 30
ON STAGE
Mary Poppins
The arrival of Mary Poppins brings whimsical imagination and a bit of magic to the Banks family of London.
Theatre Memphis, through July 2
Jersey Boys
The Broadway smash hit, chronicling the rise and eventual breakup of the legendary doo-wop group Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, makes its regional premiere in the Bluff City.
Playhouse on the Square, through July 16
Frozen
An unforgettable theatrical experience filled with sensational special effects, stunning sets and costumes, and powerhouse performances, Frozen is everything you want in a musical.
Orpheum Theatre, June 22-July 2
24 Hour Plays: Memphis
Witness this electrifying theatrical event as six new plays are written, rehearsed, and performed within a thrilling 24-hour time frame.
TheatreWorks@The Evergreen, June 24, 7 p.m.
Don’t Hydroplane
Winner of the 2022 NewWorks@TheWorks Playwriting Competition, Don’t Hydroplane follows a family as they navigate the difficult task of finding a final resting place for their loved one.
TheatreWorks@The Square, July 7-July 23
The Color Purple
The musical adaptation of The Color Purple features awe-inspiring soul, gospel, jazz, and blues vocals underpinned by raw dialogue and a masterful plot.
Hattiloo Theatre, July 28-August 28
Karlous Miller: At the End of the Day
Karlous Miller is an American comedian, actor, writer, host, and co-founder of the 85 South Show. He began his comedy career in Atlanta, Georgia, and is widely known for his star roles in MTV’s Wild ’N Out, HBO’s Def Comedy Jam, and BET’s ComicView.
Orpheum Theatre, August 5, 7 p.m.
Billy Cherry … The Final Curtain
Bill Cherry pays tribute to CBS’s Elvis in Concert, the posthumous 1977 television special.
Halloran Centre, August 12, 2:45 p.m.
Sister Act
When a disco nightclub singer witnesses a crime, she is relocated to a convent for her protection. Her stay with the nuns helps her and the sisters, quite literally, find their true voices.
Theatre Memphis, August 18-September 10
The Prom
A group of Broadway stars comes to the rescue when a student is refused the opportunity to bring her girlfriend to the prom.
Playhouse on the Square, August 18-September 17
A Raisin in the Sun
Set on Chicago’s South Side, Lorraine Hansberry’s celebrated play concerns the divergent dreams and conflicts in three generations of the Younger family.
Hattiloo Theatre, August 25-September 24
Fat Ham
In a deliciously funny retelling of Shakespeare’s Hamlet set in the American South, William returns home after his father’s death and must confront corruption and betrayal.
The Circuit Playhouse, September 15-October 8
The Crucible
Based on events which took place in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692, this tragedy tells the story of a village that becomes embroiled in a witch hunt.
Theatre Memphis, September 15-October 1
Father Comes Home from the Wars
An explosively powerful drama about the mess of war, the cost of freedom, and the heartbreak of love.
Hattiloo Theatre, September 29-October 22
Pictures at an Exhibition & Chris Brubeck Guitar Concerto
Memphis Symphony Orchestra brings you the world premiere of Chris Brubeck’s double guitar concerto, featuring both classical and blues guitar.
Cannon Center for the Performing Arts, September 30, 7:30 p.m.; Scheidt Family Performing Arts Center, October 1, 2:30 p.m.
AROUND TOWN
First Wednesdays at the Brooks
Every first Wednesday the Brooks will have incredible live music.
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, first Wednesdays of the month, 5:30-7:30 p.m.
Munch and Learn
Every Wednesday during lunchtime, join the Dixon for presentations by local artists, scholars, and Dixon staff sharing on a variety of topics.
Dixon Gallery & Gardens, Wednesdays, noon-1 p.m.
Super Saturdays at the Brooks
The first Saturday of every month, the Brooks will have free admission from 10 a.m.-noon and art-making led by art educator Mrs. Rose. (PS: Every Saturday, admission is free from 10 a.m.-noon.)
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, first Saturdays of the month, 10 a.m.-noon
Free Family Day
On the second Saturday of each month, the Stax Museum offers free admission for everyone. There will also be food trucks, games and activities, arts and crafts for children, bouncy houses, face painting, balloon artists, and live music.
Stax Museum of American Soul Music, second Saturdays of the month, 1-5 p.m.
Oil Painting with Glynnis
In this class, students will paint a still life composition using oil paints.
Arrow Creative, June 25, 11 a.m.
Rich Sounds at the Garden
Join the Memphis Botanic Garden on the last Sunday of each month to enjoy performances and demonstrations from local arts and culture organizations.
Memphis Botanic Garden, June 25, July 30, August 27, September 24, 2-5 p.m.
Whet Thursdays
Enjoy a free after-hours event held at the Metal Museum on the last Thursday of the month with games on the lawn, food truck fare, live music, metalsmithing demos, and more.
Metal Museum, June 29, July 27, August 31, 5-7 p.m.
Public Art Yoga
UrbanArt Commission will offer free 45-minute outdoor public art yoga sessions this summer.
Various locations, July 8, August 12, September 9
Art Club with Joi Purvy
Decorate and take home your own terra-cotta pot with acrylic paint and gold foil!
Arrow Creative, July 10, 6 p.m.
Fairy Garden Planting Party (21+)
Put together your own unique fairy garden! All supplies will be provided, including plants, pots, soil, and decorations. Bring your own drinks and snacks to enjoy while you’re creating. This event is for adults only 21+.
Memphis Botanic Garden, July 21, 6:30 p.m.
Crown Me Royal Film Fest
This noncompetitive film festival showcases panels, workshops, and independent films from BIPOC behind-the-scenes filmmakers and creatives from all media platforms.
Various locations, August 4-6
Night at the Museum
Explore the Dixon galleries like never before as works step out of the canvas for an evening of special performances and music, activities, and much more.
Dixon Gallery & Gardens, August 12, 5-8 p.m.
Marketplace in Motion
Shop colorful new prints, creative cards, and fun stickers to throw onto your new notebooks. Stop by Friday night to grab a cold drink while you shop, or bring your kids through on Saturday for them to pick out their own decorative school starter pack.
Arrow Creative, August 18-August 19
Art on the Rocks: Garden Cocktails & Craft Beer (21+)
Enjoy botanical cocktails, craft beer, and wine in the Dixon Gardens. Each admission ticket includes all drink tastings and bites from local restaurants along with live entertainment.
Dixon Gallery & Gardens, September 8, 6-9 p.m.
Marketplace in Motion
Shop from local makers, grab a drink, and catch a football game with some friends.
Loflin Yard, September 23, 11 a.m.-5 p.m.