Calendar of Events

Visitors to the Museum of East Tennessee History will have an opportunity to view special items associated with the “Freedom Engine,” a tribute gift from East Tennesseans to New York City following the events of September 11, 2001. East Tennesseans contributed more than $940,000 to purchase and equip a 95-foot tower ladder truck for Harlem-based Ladder Company 14, helping the New York City Fire Department (FDNY) replenish the largest vehicles in the city's firefighting fleet. The so-called "Freedom Engine," went into service during March 2002 and was dedicated on September 11th of that year.

FDNY typically retires their trucks from regular service after about 10 years. The Freedom Engine went into reserve status in 2013. Upon retirement, several artifacts associated with the truck, including a bucket door, captain's helmet, memorial plaque from the people of East Tennessee, and a presentation plaque containing a piece of World Trade Center metal, were returned to East Tennessee and donated to the East Tennessee Historical Society. These items will be on display through October 13, 2019, at the Museum of East Tennessee History, along with a video about the project. You may view the exhibit and artifacts online at the ETHS website at www.easttnhistory.org/exhibits/freedom-engine.

Each Sunday is Family Day and is free to the public.

East Tennessee Historical Society, 601 S. Gay Street, Knoxville, TN 37902. Museum hours: M-F 9-4, Sa 10-4, Su 1-5. Information: 865-215-8824, www.easttnhistory.org

A personal visit to invented places as seen by the mind’s eye

Reception: Friday, September 6, 6 PM – 8 PM.......food, drinks, & music

At Michael’s Fine Art and Framing, 1325 Dug Gap Road, Dalton, GA
706-278-8840

Sundays from 8-11 PM
Hosted by Brickyard Bar & BBQ and True Grit Comedy
4928 Homberg Dr., Knoxville, Tennessee 37919

Welcome back to Bearden, once again, for your local Sunday night Comedy open mic, hosted by David Habel. We'll be featuring some of the best comedians that Knoxville, East Tennessee, and beyond have to offer. Newcomers are encouraged and inclusivity is promoted. Come out, laugh, and take a break from life.

Sign-up: 8:00-8:30 - Mic goes Hot: 8:30

https://www.facebook.com/truegritcomedy

by Colin Escott and Floyd Mutrux, CBT Mainstage

There’ll be a whole lotta shakin’ going on at the Clarence Brown Theatre when the Tony Award winning musical “Million Dollar Quartet” takes the mainstage August 28, 2019 to September 22, 2019!

A Pay What You Can Preview performance, where patrons can name their own price, will be held Wednesday, August 28 with proceeds from these tickets benefitting The Joy of Music School. A pre-show reception for Clarence Brown Theatre Society members will take place prior to the Opening Night performance on August 30. A Behind the Scenes Sunday event focusing on what it takes to make the music happen on stage will take place following the September 1 matinee performance. An Actor Talk Back will take place Sunday, September 8 following the matinee performance. The Open Captioned performance is Sunday, September 15 at 2:00 pm. An additional “Broadway at the Keys” performance featuring Levi Kreis will take place September 23rd at 7:30 pm.

If you loved “Always, Patsy Cline,” “Honky Tonk Angels,” and “Lost Highway,” you don’t want to miss this Tony Award winning musical based on actual events! It’s December 4, 1956 in Memphis, Tennessee. Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash hold an impromptu jam session at Sam Phillips’ Sun Record Studios. “No doubt you will enjoy the music as you see familiar characters come to life, however you will not see impersonators but a cast of great musicians recreating the time, the music, and one day in American musical history. They are spirited, passionate and filled with youthful optimistic energy as they fight and find individual successes at the beginning of their careers,” said director Kate Buckley.

Free and convenient parking is available in the McClung Tower Garage on Volunteer Boulevard.
Clarence Brown Theatre, 1714 Andy Holt Ave on the UT campus, Knoxville, TN 37996. For information: 865-974-5161, www.clarencebrowntheatre.com. For tickets: 865-974-5161, 865-656-4444, www.knoxvilletickets.com

Whistler & Company includes nearly a dozen works by Whistler accompanied by more than 50 etchings by some of his most accomplished American and European contemporaries. Whistler’s gritty images of the River Thames, views of Venice, and Parisian scenes are among works featured in the exhibition. Other artists who participated in the etching revival include Francis Seymour Haden, James McBey, Edwin Edwards, David Young Cameron, Muirhead Bone, Mortimer Menpes, Charles Meryon, Maxime Lalanne, Joseph Pennell, and Frank Duveneck, among others.

Although best known for innovative paintings such as Arrangements in Gray and Black No. 1 (popularly known as “Whistler’s Mother”), Whistler was a talented printmaker. The exhibition Whistler & Company examines the artist’s influential role in the etching revival of the 19th and early 20th centuries. This revival took hold in France, England and the United States. Artists set out to reestablish etching—the art of incising lines with an etching needle into a thin copper plate which was then inked and pressed into paper with the help of a printing press to create impressions—as an art form that could stand on its own. Inspired by Rembrandt, and the old masters, practitioners created remarkable original and expressive compositions that gained popularity with refined collectors and the broader public.

The legacy of expatriate American artist, James Abbott McNeill Whistler (Lowell, Massachusetts 1834-1903 London) was far-reaching, and his sphere of influence included early 20th-century East Tennessee. The Nicholson Art League, for instance, Knoxville’s leading art group of the period, dedicated its entire December 1, 1911 program to Whistler. Led by noted impressionist Catherine Wiley, the gathering featured presentations including “Whistler’s Influence on American Art,” and Whistler, His Life and Work.”

All of the works in in the exhibition are drawn from the Reading Public Museum’s permanent collection of works on paper, which numbers more than 10,000. Whistler & Company: The Etching Revival is organized by the Reading Public Museum, Reading, Pennsylvania.

Knoxville Museum of Art, 1050 World's Fair Park Dr, Knoxville, TN 37916. Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 10AM-5PM, Sunday, 1-5PM. Information: 865-525-6101, www.knoxart.org

The Ewing Gallery is excited to kick off the fall semester with an exhibition of works by American sculptor, Ronald Bladen.

Angle / Edge / Plane features a collection of models, drawings, and photographs from the Estate of Ronald Bladen and the Loretta Howard Gallery.

Ronald Bladen (1918 – 1988) was a Minimalist best known for his large-scale sculptures. He is often credited with influencing fellow Minimalists Carl Andre, Donald Judd, and Sol LeWitt. Sculptures by Ronald Bladen have been featured in exhibitions at important public institutions including at the Albright Knox Art Gallery, Detroit Institute of Arts, Documenta 4, Kassel, Germany, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, The Jewish Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Philadelphia Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, Vancouver Art Museum, The Walker Art Center, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York among others.

Ewing Gallery, 1715 Volunteer Blvd on the UT campus, Knoxville, TN 37996. Information: 865-974-3200, www.ewing-gallery.utk.edu

Reception Friday, August 16, 6:00 to 7:30 pm. Artists’ talks at 6:30 pm.

Free and open to the public

David Denton
This work is the byproduct of exploration into the potential for artistic expression using the new technologies of the Virtual World and digital photography. Denton said, “I finally made my peace with the rigidity of the computer and went into partnership with it to explore ways to stumble onto appealing images.” The images are the result of manipulating photographs mostly taken with a smart phone and altered in Photoshop. Denton subjects them to a series of random commands, frequently with no idea of what might result. His primary role as the artist is mostly deciding what to keep. “The greatest benefit for me has been learning to view the real world through the photographer’s eye,” he said, “focusing on the interesting and appealing and ignoring the ugly and banal, making the visual aspect of life far more enjoyable.”

Allen Monsarrat
Monsarrat’s artwork begins with his own photography. “This allows me to carefully design my composition and include as much detailed information as I choose,” he said. “More important, as my reference source, it allows me to study the nuances of color, light and reflection and how they change across a seemingly uniformly colored surface.” Using translucent layers of paint, he is able to build depth unachievable with ink on paper. “To counter my tendency toward too much realism,” he said, “I began working in pastels in 2018. It is still representational work, but much more graphic, as the pastel pigments lie on top of the paper and on top of one another. They don’t mix like paint. It is the eye and brain that do the blending.”

Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, 2931 Kingston Pike, Knoxville, TN 37919. Gallery hours: M-Th 10-5, Su 10-1. Information: 865-523-4176, www.tvuuc.org

Details TBA

Drown Wood Gallery
Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, 556 Parkway, Gatlinburg, TN 37738. Information: 865-436-5860, www.arrowmont.org

"It’ll Tickle Yore Innards!”: A (Hillbilly) History of Mountain Dew

Special Members Preview: Thursday, June 27, 2019, from 4:00-6:00 p.m.

The exhibition highlights the drink’s history, from the origins of the term “mountain dew” and the development of the marketable hillbilly image that influenced media and culture, to becoming the third most popular soft drink brand.

The exhibition includes more than 200 artifacts highlighting the drinks history, moonshining, and the hillbilly image. The exhibition begins with video footage of early moonshine busts and a visit to a moonshine still in Cocke County in 1938. A variety of liquor jugs, dating from as early as the 1890s are on display with other moonshine paraphernalia. There is an assortment of artifact reflecting the early color writers and their effects on the hillbilly image, as well as artifacts from Knoxville’s 1910 Appalachian Exposition. One case contains a variety of “hillbilly” memorabilia, including Beverly Hillbillies dolls, comic books, Lil’ Abner items, and a pair of Hee Haw overalls.

The exhibition features a 1900 carbonation machine from the Roddy Coca-Cola Bottling Company in Knoxville and a sizeable display of rare and highly collectable bottles, including a few dating to Knoxville in 1927, a progression of Mountain Dew bottles over the years, and a variety of other vintage soft drinks from around the region. Of special interest are the “Barney and Ally” bottles, which were the first Mountain Dew bottles ever produced. In 1951 and 1952, the Hartman Beverage Company produced 7 oz. green and clear bottles. The applied color label’s bare the name of the creators of Mountain Dew. In the early 1950s, green bottles were reserved for “colorless” flavors, while clear bottles were used for drinks where the color would reflect the actual flavor. Mountain Dew was originally bottled as a set of flavored drinks and not as a specific flavor like today. Also displayed are a variety of items relating to the Hartmann family.

East Tennessee Historical Society, 601 S. Gay Street, Knoxville, TN 37902. Museum hours: M-F 9-4, Sa 10-4, Su 1-5. Information: 865-215-8824, www.easttnhistory.org

Knoxville - Our Wings of Wonder Butterfly Exhibit has been installed throughout the Gardens. Twenty-five large scale butterflies decorated by area artists will be on display until September 8 (when they will be auctioned off to the public). Come enjoy their whimsical beauty!

This is the second year of this great collaboration of artists and the UT Gardens whereby the showcased art is auctioned to benefit the Gardens. This year's theme of butterflies hopes to showcase the importance of pollinators to our ecosystems and is in conjunction with pollinator research being conducted at the UT Gardens and elsewhere around the world.

UT Gardens, Chapman Drive, Knoxville, TN 37996. Information: 865-974-7151, http://utgardens.tennessee.edu

3:00 PM - 6:00 PM on the 1st & 3rd Sunday of each month

Blackhorse Brewery on Gay Street in Downtown Knoxville hosts the WDVX Downtown Jam. Banjos, fiddles, mandolins and guitars all welcome. This is a great opportunity to meet new musical friends, learn tunes and jam!

WDVX info: 865-544-1029, http://wdvx.com

Blackhorse Brewery Gay Street Pub, 430 S Gay St, Knoxville, TN 37902: (865) 249-8511 or https://www.blackhorsebrews.com/pubs/knoxville

Dogwood Arts Art In Public Places - Temporary Sculpture Exhibition

An exhibition of large-scale outdoor sculptures in downtown Knoxville, the McGhee Tyson Airport, Zoo Knoxville, and Oak Ridge. The annual rotating installation is one of many Dogwood Arts programs focused on providing access to the arts for everyone, promoting awareness of the strong visual arts community thriving in our region, and creating a vibrant and inspiring environment for residents and visitors to experience.

Sculpture installation will take place March 22-23, 2019.

Dogwood Arts, 123 W. Jackson Ave, Knoxville, TN 37902. Information: 865-637-4561, www.dogwoodarts.com