Fairy Tales, Monsters, and the Genetic Imagination Exhibit Preview

I have the opportunity to attend the media preview of Fairy Tales, Monsters, and the Genetic Imagination this past week. The exhibit opened here in Nashville on Friday at the Frist Center. This week I plan to highlight the work of several of the artists represented in the exhibit, but that begins tomorrow. Today I wanted to share a link and a few of the images from the Nashville Scene's preview of the exhibit installed to entice you to go over there and look.

Go to Installation View: Fairy Tales, Monsters and the Genetic Imagination at The Frist by Laura Hutson to see many more pictures than these. The three I share here are borrowed from the article and all rights belong to the photographer and Nashville Scene. I was there when these were take and managed to only get half photographed in one. (So, nothing for Pinterest, Gypsy. Grin. I like it that way.)

The exhibition catalog is already temporarily out of stock at Amazon which I hope means there was a demand for it since I know it shipped to at least one friend this week. (It also was probably fairly low inventory since Amazon had bumped the original ship date to late March and then shipped copies this week when they became available to those who preordered.) The catalog has two great essays by Jack Zipes and Marina Warner which will be of particular interest to readers here.

The exhibit moves to Winnipeg this summer and then on to Calgary. Here in Nashville, however, one can still attend a few curator tours which expand upon the collection even more. Mark Scala brings out nuances and details in the collection that I may have missed after several visits.

For those only interested in the fairy tale aspect of the exhibit, the out right fairy tale interpretations are limited to the first room and then the exhibit expands to fairy tale and folklore inspired themes and moves on to monsters, etc. I think it is still worth the price of admission to you, too. Here in Nashville, the fairy tales are in a cave like room, with trees surrounding the doorway. The forest theme is perfect and the exhibit's designers did a great job with colors and displays. (I'm always impressed with the Frist's display decisions in exhibits like these.)