Calendar of Events

Landfall Press: Five Decades of Printmaking celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of one of the country’s most renowned printers-publishers. Founded in 1970 by Jack Lemon, Landfall Press played a key role in expanding the geography of the American postwar print renaissance. In the late 1950s and 1960s, new printmaking workshops, including Universal Limited Art Editions, Tamarind Lithography Workshop, and Gemini G.E.L., opened on the East and West Coasts. Jack Lemon helped bring this printmaking revival to the Midwest. He learned lithography at the Kansas City Art Institute, then later established and directed lithography workshops there in 1965 and at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1968. He opened Landfall Press in Chicago, effectively creating a new hub for printmaking that attracted artists from around the country.

Landfall Press is known for its outstanding innovation and exacting technical standards. It specializes in lithography but has also produced etchings, woodcuts, books, and multiples that have often redefined what a print can be. As a publisher, Lemon has collaborated with a diverse range of international artists, introducing many of them to the process of printmaking. Landfall operated out of Chicago for thirty-five years and, in 2004, relocated to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where it continues to serve new generations.

Knoxville Museum of Art, 1050 World's Fair Park, Knoxville, TN 37916. Hours: Tu-Sa 10-5, Su 1-5. Information: 865-525-6101, www.knoxart.org. Admission and parking are free.

DECK THE HALLS... The KMA's Thorne Rooms are all decorated for the holiday season! After Thanksgiving, Knoxville Museum of Art pulls out the tinsel and trimmings to get our collection of Thorne Rooms ready for the most wonderful time of the year! Thank you to East Tennessee miniature artisans and Thorne Room experts Annelle Ferguson and Jolie Gaston for making it all possible. On view through December 30.

The Thorne Rooms were developed in the 1930s and 40s by Narcissa Niblack Thorne, Chicago, IL, who loved dollhouses as a child. After extensive travels in Europe where she collected miniature furniture and accessories, Mrs. Thorne had over two dozen miniature rooms created by cabinetmakers from her own drawings. They were made in a scale of one inch to one foot. She painted and stained woodwork, papered walls, and made textiles for the rooms. Read more: https://knoxart.org/exhibitions/thorne-rooms/

Knoxville Museum of Art, 1050 World's Fair Park, Knoxville, TN 37916. Hours: Tu-Sa 10-5, Su 1-5. Information: 865-525-6101, www.knoxart.org. Admission and parking are free.

Our relationship to moving images is constantly evolving. Amid the global COVID-19 pandemic, for example, our use of–and reliance on–streaming services to access Hollywood blockbusters not only changed how we watch movies but also disrupted traditional models for financing and distributing such productions.

How did our relationship with moving images begin? What technological and cultural events sparked our interest in motion pictures as entertainment? And what role has East Tennessee and its people had in moviemaking?

Lights! Camera! East Tennessee!, a new feature exhibition at the East Tennessee History Center, answers these questions by chronicling Knoxville’s contributions to film from the promotion of Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope in 1895 to its use as a location for major productions currently in development. At the heart of the story is 35 mm film, shown both in urban theaters and suburban cineplexes and shot by itinerant filmmakers, documentarians, industrial filmmakers, and news reporters. Multiple screens featuring highlights from these genres anchor the exhibition.

Equally intriguing are the stories of how Knoxvillians made Hollywood history. Learn about Clarence Brown, a graduate of Knoxville High School and the University of Tennessee, who became one of MGM’s most prominent directors. And see why James Agee, known to us today as a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, was better known as a film critic and screenwriter during his life.

Lights! Camera! East Tennessee! will also spotlight the numerous actors from across East Tennessee who became Hollywood A-listers and the variety of films that were shot in East Tennessee, including A Walk in the Spring Rain (1970) and That Evening Sun (2009), both of which premiered in Knoxville.

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/lights-camera