NASHVILLE, TN.- On April 15, renowned Artist William Christenberry will discuss the exhibition Passing Time: The Art of William Christenberry currently on view in Cheekwood’s Museum of Art. Christenberry, along with Cheekwood’s curator of art, Jochen Wierich, will share the stories and memories that inspired him and led him to devote his career to documenting the South in his art.

An Evening with William Christenberry
6pm, Massey Auditorium, Botanic Hall

“Christenberry is one of the most important living artists from the South who also focuses on the South in his work,” said Jochen Wierich, Cheekwood’s Curator of Art. “His work has rarely been exhibited in Tennessee, and the Smithsonian retrospective is the first major survey of his work in Tennessee.”

William Christenberry (b.1936) looks for the signs of time passing in the landscape and architecture of the South, especially rural Alabama. Drawing from his formal training, family traditions and a lasting relationship with his boyhood home in Alabama, Christenberry has spent the past 50 years creating a remarkable body of work that explores all aspects of life and experience.

Christenberry received a bachelor’s degree in 1958 and a master’s degree in 1959 from the University of Alabama. Shortly thereafter, he began experimenting with a Brownie camera and in the mid-1970s, Christenberry created his first building construction inspired by his own photographs. Christenberry teaches at the Corcoran College of Art + Design in Washington, D.C. and has received numerous awards, fellowships and grants including the Lyndhurst Foundation Prize, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship and an Art Matters grant. In 2005 he gave a lecture titled “Southern Views” as part of the Clarice Smith Distinguished Lectures in American Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Christenberry is represented by Hemphill Fine Arts in Washington, D.C. and Pace/MacGill Gallery in New York City.