Art Exhibitions at Big Ears!
Big Ears has always believed that the festival experience extends beyond the stage. Each year, we partner with the Knoxville Museum of Art, UT’s Downtown Gallery, RED Gallery, and the Emporium to present visual art exhibitions that live in conversation with the music — and occasionally blur the line between the two with surprise pop-up concerts right in the galleries. Here’s what we have in store for 2026.
Wayne White: Revenge of the Knoxville Girl
Last year, we were delighted to present Wayne White’s Big Words at the Emporium — this year, he returns with a larger-scale show named Revenge of the Knoxville Girl, at the Knoxville Museum of Art. Born and raised in Chattanooga, TN, White is a singular figure whose fingerprints are all over American pop culture — from the anarchic puppetry of Pee-wee’s Playhouse to album art, illustration, and beyond. Drawing deep from the well of Southern memory, he transforms the everyday into the mythical, turning humble materials into works that are at once epic, irreverent, and genuinely playful.
Presented in collaboration with Big Ears, the Aslan Foundation, and the Knoxville Museum of Art, his newest exhibition features paintings, drawings, and small sculptures alongside a monumental animatronic puppet that embodies the eccentric storytelling at the heart of his practice. Proof that wit and imagination, in the right hands, are forces to be reckoned with. Not to be missed!
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Rob Mazurek: Radical Chimeras
Multi-instrumentalist, composer, and bandleader Rob Mazurek is no stranger to Big Ears, and he is returning this year with his three-decade-long collaboration with Chad Taylor, the Chicago Underground Duo. Mazurek is also an accomplished and celebrated visual artist whose work has been exhibited throughout the world, including at the Rothko Chapel and in Marfa, TX.
During Big Ears 2026, Rob presents a new body of work — paintings, sound-generated animations, large-format prints, and sculpture — converging into hybrid visual forms where sound becomes the organizing force. Even when no sound is heard, sonic vibration is translated into movement, color, and spatial structure, inviting viewers to experience the visual behavior of sound rather than its acoustic form. Timed to coincide with Big Ears, Radical Chimeras extends the festival’s spirit of innovation into the visual realm, offering an immersive encounter with Mazurek’s interdisciplinary practice at the UT Downtown Gallery. Unsurprisingly, Rob has some surprise musical performances in mind for the gallery as well.
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Andy Saftel: “Is Everybody Ready?”
“Is everybody ready?” — the phrase Andrew Saftel’s grandfather used to say before pulling his Buick Skylark down the road — carries new weight in uncertain times. Color, humor, and quiet contemplation are Saftel’s offered response.
A graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute, Saftel arrived in Knoxville in the mid-1980s and never left, building studios on Central, Broadway, and eventually a derelict warehouse on Jackson Avenue before settling into the rural landscape where he works every day. Forty years of Tennessee art-making culminate in this exhibition — a homecoming for an artist who has never missed a Big Ears Festival.
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Michael Weintrob: INSTRUMENTHEAD
Photographer Michael Weintrob returns to Big Ears — nearly a decade after launching the award-winning INSTRUMENTHEAD book here in 2017. The series presents musicians obscured by the instruments that define their sound, portraits suspended between identity and anonymity. A pandemic-era follow-up, INSTRUMENTHEAD: Revealed, reunites the same musicians, this time unmasked — forming a complete visual dialogue between the surreal portrait and its real counterpart. Both volumes are award-winning titles from the Independent Publisher Book Awards.
Stop by the INSTRUMENTHEAD Art Truck located outside of Mill & Mine to experience the work in a curated setting and order limited edition prints and box sets!
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Ashley Layendecker curates time.place
Curated by Nashville-based Ashley Layendecker, time.place examines how geographic and temporal context shape artistic practice — and how the communities surrounding an artist become as formative as the work itself. Guided by the proverb “iron sharpens iron,” the exhibition brings together fifteen Tennessee-based, Tennessee-born, or Tennessee-influenced artists whose relationships with one another and with this region have mutually refined their practices.
Throughout the exhibition, artists will respond to prompts exploring the meaning of time and place in their work, culminating in a closing weekend panel discussion during Big Ears Festival. Layendecker is Director of Red Arrow Gallery in Nashville, where she has curated over sixty exhibitions across the U.S. and abroad.
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