NASHVILLE, TN.- The Frist Art Museum presents Sistah Griot: The Iconoclastic Art of Barbara Bullock, an exhibition that showcases the incisive and still-timely work of Nashville-based artist Barbara Bullock (1949−1996). Organized by the Frist Art Museum with guest curator Carlton F. Wilkinson, the exhibition is part of the Tennessee Triennial and is on view in the Frist’s Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery from January 29 through April 26, 2026.

Known for her precisely rendered graphite illustrations and boldly colored paintings, Bullock was active in the Nashville art community in the 1980s and 1990s until she passed away from cancer in 1996. This exhibition features approximately 40 works from private collections around the country and is an opportunity for new audiences to learn about the influential yet undercelebrated artist.

“She influenced so many artists in Nashville with her fearless and candid disposition. Her legacy is one of radical honesty, spiritual awakening, and a commitment to healing through art,” writes Wilkinson. “Many continue to see her as a griot, a West African term for an oral historian and storyteller, and her works continue to be relevant as visual representations of both personal and collective experiences.” The imprint Bullock left on the Nashville art community lives on in her network of close friends and colleagues, some of whom are featured in the adjacent exhibition, In Her Place: Nashville Artists in the Twenty-First Century.

Barbara Bullock moved to Nashville in 1969 from Buffalo, New York, and studied art at George Peabody College for Teachers (now a part of Vanderbilt University). After suffering a debilitating stroke at the age of 35, she returned to full-time artmaking as part of her physical recovery to rehabilitate her hand-eye coordination. She began taking art classes at the Watkins Institute (now Watkins College of Art at Belmont University) and made detailed contour line drawings of wrestlers, street pedestrians, dancers, and performing artists. At that time, Bullock’s style shifted considerably from precisely rendered graphite illustrations to boldly colored paintings that defy realistic spatial construction, influenced by both the double vision caused by her stroke and the work of M. C. Escher.