Current Exhibitions at the Reece Museum

Reece Museum

  • Exploring The Culture

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

  • WONDERLANDS (January 12 - May 22)

    The Reece Museum at East Tennessee State University presents Wonderlands, an exhibition of photographs and Reece artifacts engaging with the cultural history of the southeastern United States by photographer and ETSU professor Tema Stauffer. The exhibition is on display Jan. 12 through May 22. A reception for Wonderlands will be held on Friday, Feb. 13 from 5 to 8 p.m. The reception will include a gallery walkthrough with the artist.

    Wonderlands explores the intersection of tourism, religion, and folklore with natural beauty, preservation, and decay in southern Appalachia. The title of the series draws inspiration from novelist Charles Baxter’s collection of essays about fiction writing, Wonderlands: Essays on the Life of Literature, in which he describes settings that reflect a heightened psychological atmosphere in specific literary works. “Wonderlands are caused by, or are expressive of, emotional instability, estrangement, fantasy, and solitude,” Baxter writes.

    The exhibition focuses on settings that evoke characteristics of wonderlands in counties of western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee, and southeastern Virginia. Roadside attractions, religious iconography, relics, and verdant landscapes create a psychic experience that is at once eerily still and emotionally charged. The most recent photographs in the series capture tragic destruction against the backdrop of natural beauty after Hurricane Helene devastated parts of the region in 2024. In conversation with the photographs are a selection of Appalachian artifacts from the Reece Museum’s collection, creating a unique dialogue that connects visual art and material culture.

    Tema Stauffer is a photographer whose work examines the social, economic, and cultural landscape of American spaces. She is an associate professor of photography at East Tennessee State University. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States and internationally. Daylight Books published two monographs of her work, Upstate (2018) and Southern Fiction (2022). Selected prints from these two series were exhibited at ETSU’s Reece Museum, Tracey Morgan Gallery, ilon Art Gallery, Hudson Hall, Auburn University’s Biggin Gallery, MTSU’s Baldwin Photographic Gallery, Winthrop University’s Rutledge Gallery, Upstairs Artspace, and Chattanooga State Community College’s Denise Heinly Art Center. Her work is represented by Tracey Morgan Gallery in Asheville, North Carolina.

    Production of the Wonderlands exhibition was made possible by a Research Funding Program Award (2024) and a Summer Research Award (2024) from the College of Arts and Sciences at East Tennessee State University.

  • Through the Light: Sculptural Works by Molly Sawyer (January 20 - April 2) 

    The Reece Museum at East Tennessee State University is please to present Through the Light: Sculptural Works by Molly Sawyer, Jan. 19 through April 3, 2026. The exhibition by cross-disciplinary artist Molly Sawyer weighs the ominous nature of the human dilemma against that of peaceful, and sometimes playful, intention. A reception with the artist will be held on Friday, Feb. 13 from 5-8 p.m. The Reece Museum is free and open to the public Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.  

    Based in Asheville, North Carolina, Sawyer’s contemporary works combining salvaged with artist-made materials bridge sculpture and installation art with works on paper. The artist’s chosen materials and methods used for combining such pull the past into the present, emphasizing Sawyer’s concern with global changes, both ecological and humanitarian. She blends her disparate materials in a contemporary manner using versions of traditionally craft-based techniques of stitching, embroidery, knitting, felting, and piecing, among others. These combinations emblematize a convergence of the historical with the current, illustrating conceptual narratives relating to universal concerns. As these investigations are metaphor describing the balance of forces in nature with the human condition, Sawyer states, “By collecting materials which have had one or more lives already, I am giving credence to their narratives, which have been developed through handling, weathering and age.” 

    Sawyer was introduced to the Reece Museum when her work was juried into the 2024 Embodying Culture: Women in Appalachia, an exhibition exploring the ways in which women embody Appalachian culture and traditions of the past and present while shaping the future. She has since worked with Reece staff to build this solo exhibition occupying two galleries with her large-scale, suspended, sculptural installations and works on paper. “It has been a wonderful process to work with Molly as this exhibition has taken shape,” Spenser Brenner, exhibition coordinator at the Reece, said. “The Museum is excited to see her work transform the galleries.” 

    ABOUT THE ARTIST 

    A native of Atlanta, Georgia, Molly Sawyer attended the New York Studio School (2002), the Art Students’ League of New York (2004), and Guilford College (1995). Her works have been exhibited in the Asheville Art Museum (2020), Reece Museum (2024), Contemporary Art Museum (CAM) Raleigh (2020), Western North Carolina University (2020), Gertrude Herbert Institute of Art (2017), and North Greenville University (2013). Other group shows have included her work in New York, New Jersey, Georgia, and Virginia. Her work is among permanent collections at the Reece Museum; Mandarin Oriental, New York; The Ritz-Carlton Boston; AC Hotel Atlanta Midtown; Mohegan Sun Casino, Uncasville, Connecticut; and the former Atlanta Medical Center. She has conducted art residencies in North Carolina, Connecticut, Wyoming, Washington, and Ireland and currently maintains a studio in Asheville, NC.

  • Exploring the Culture: Hip Hop in Appalachia (November 10 - February)

    Featuring regional artists Jonathan Adams, Jason Flack, and Doniqua Joyner, Exploring The Culture celebrates the visual culture of Hip Hop in Appalachia. This exhibition is a part of the CELEBRATE! Hip Hop event occurring in the museum on November 13, 2025.

    The Reece Museum has hosted an event series delving into Hip Hop culture every November since 2021. This programming is designed to be a holistic cultural experience that addresses connective spaces between participants and audiences through scholarship and academic lectures, visual art and an exhibition, community building and outreach, and of course, music and performance. The series began after the U.S. Senate passed a resolution that designated November 2021 as “Hip Hop History Month,” elevating Hip Hop’s status to equal other uniquely American genres such as jazz, blues, gospel, and rock and roll. Senate Resolution 331 states that “Hip Hop artists and supporters, originally of African heritage, now transcend many different ages, ethnicities, religions, locations, political affiliations, and socioeconomic statuses, which demonstrates the melting-pot quality of Hip Hop art and culture.”

      

Schedule a Tour:
Email Spenser Brenner with preferred dates, times, and estimated number of individuals for a tour. Please schedule your tour at least one week in advance. We look forward to having you and your group in the Reece Museum!