Exhibitions

Current & Upcoming Exhibitions

Upcoming: September 22–December 4, 2025

HAGOOD: Lanecia Rouse and Ciona Rouse

“this past was waiting for me
when i came” -Lucille Clifton

Hagood, South Carolina.

34° 03′ 15.60″ N. -80° 34′ 10.79″ W.

It’s where our maternal living memory begins. Great-Great-Grandmother Annie, who lived into our toddler years, called Hagood home. It’s where she took in her namesake and our Grandmother Annie Lee when she was still young and begged to leave Philadelphia to stay in Carolina with her grandmother. It’s where Annie Lee gave birth to our mother Connie. Hagood is a sort of home—even though it mostly exists for us in our infant memory

But there’s something about the South, something about being Black in the South, something about being Black and woman in the South that makes looking back a necessary way forward.

HAGOOD finds visual artist Lanecia Rouse collaborating with her sister and poet Ciona Rouse to explore their matrilineal line, in search of the softness and steel of the long line of women that carried them into the world. Through mixed media collage, installation, color meditations and poetry, the artists conjure up the world of their mothers, relying on passed-down stories and objects from the family archive, photographs, and the intentional practice of Toni Morrison’s concept of rememory—an act of re-experiencing inherited memories that are not your own. HAGOOD reflects the griefs, the artistry, the care and the resiliency that bind their family line and define their experience as Black women in the southern United States.

HAGOOD invites you to the land, to the home, and to the table the Rouse sisters have set. There, we encounter and contemplate the necessary quest into past connections that make us human today.

Visit the Curb Center

The Curb Center’s galleries are open to the public Monday–Thursday, 10am–4pm, as well as Fridays and weekends by appointment, during exhibition dates. The galleries will be closed November 24–28, 2025, for Thanksgiving break.

We offer guided visits for Vanderbilt courses tailored to curricular goals. Facilitated by Curb Center staff, course visits are learner-centered experiences aimed at fostering observation, listening, and critical thinking skills. Course visits are open to all disciplines. To request a course visit to the Curb Center, please contact Rachel Thompson.

Past Exhibitions

Jan 23 – Apr 17, 2025

Changemakers of the Twenty-First Century

This exhibition celebrates Americans who have shaped the world over the past twenty-five years through diverse forms of protest—whether through activism, legislation, non-profits, or poetry. Featuring changemakers in areas like environmental conservation, racial justice, and government transparency, the show highlights the impact these individuals have had on the 21st century and future generations.

The portraits are part of Shetterly's Americans Who Tell the Truth series, which began over two decades ago to emphasize the importance of dissent in democracy and our societal responsibilities. From Shetterly’s collection of over two hundred works, fifteen paintings were chosen by Vanderbilt students in a Museum Exhibition: History of Portraiture course, who curated the show by researching, selecting, and designing the exhibition.

The goal is to provoke conversations on activism, art as a form of protest, and what it means to be an American. The portraits depict individuals who have fought against injustice and given a voice to the voiceless. The exhibition invites visitors to reflect on their own potential for impact, hoping that, like these figures, they might one day be remembered for their efforts to create change.

Sept 9 – Dec 5, 2024

Extraction/Interaction

Extraction/Interaction considers how grief can transform artistic practice into a mechanism for positive environmental impact through the work of three contemporary artists—Will Wilson, Eliza Evans, and John Sabraw. Extraction, a word that calls to mind histories of environmental degradation, displacement of Indigenous peoples, and the removal of natural resources for profit, is the conceptual thread uniting these artists’ work: Wilson’s photographs of abandoned uranium mines on Navajo lands expose and seek to remediate it; Evans’ organizing against fracking companies through mineral rights redistribution resist it; and Sabraw’s pigments made from toxins removed from polluted rivers in deindustrialized areas reappropriate it. These artistic interactions with extraction demonstrate the urgency and potential of creative inquiry into our time’s most pressing existential challenge.

Feb 9 – Mar 8, 2024

The Glory of the Day: LeXander Bryant Meets Florence B. Price

The Glory of the Day is a photography exhibition by LeXander Bryant that explores the legacy of Florence B. Price, the first African-American woman to have her composition performed by a major U.S. orchestra.

Commissioned by the Curb Center during Vanderbilt’s Florence Price: A Celebration music festival, Bryant’s work artistically documents live performances of Price’s music across Nashville, capturing the communal, ephemeral nature of music and its power to connect artists and audiences across time.

Known for highlighting overlooked communities, Bryant’s photographs reflect the spirit of Price’s barrier-breaking career and the vibrant engagement her music continues to inspire. The exhibition’s title references a poem Price once set to music, and the photographs—now housed in the Blair Music Library—preserve these moments of cultural connection for future generations.

Sept 13 – Dec 1, 2023

Reverberations: Roots of the Cedar Tree