The Hunter Museum is pleased to announce The Hunter Invitational V, an exhibition that showcases remarkable artists living and working in our region.
The Hunter began the Invitational exhibition series in 2007 to recognize the vibrant art scene of the Southeast while also examining its connection to broader trends in the art world. Unlike large, juried shows, the Invitational offers a more focused exploration of a select group of artists.
For this fifth installment, the Hunter has invited nine regional artists to create new works or further develop existing series. Whether emerging or established, each artist in the exhibition expands the boundaries of their chosen mediums through innovative techniques, approaches, techniques, and subject matter.
The artists were chosen over the course of a year, as Hunter Museum Chief Curator Nandini Makrandi conducted numerous studio visits across eastern and middle Tennessee, North Georgia, and northern Alabama.
The exhibition will showcase new works and give visitors an opportunity to delight in the “discovery” of artists from their own communities. The Hunter Invitational V opens Friday, January 30, 2026.
Hunter Invitational V artists include:
- Chattanooga artist Anna Carll combines painting, collage and mixed media within a multi-disciplined art practice based on the concept of urban erosion. Her work explores the interconnected life cycles of cities and nature.
- Corrine Colarusso, a Boston native now living in Atlanta, specializes in vibrant botanical and landscape paintings inspired by the wetlands bordering Florida and Georgia.
- Anthony Craig Drennen is an Atlanta-based painter whose current project focuses on intuitive creations inspired by the characters in Shakespeare’s play Timon of Athens.
- Atlanta-based visual artist Amie Esslinger draws inspiration from “unseen processes that have large-scale ramifications,” using vibrant color palettes and found materials to interpret the hidden microscopic structure of the physical world.
- Jerushia Graham is a papermaker, printmaker, book artist and fiber artist based in Atlanta, GA, who uses stark lines and high contrast to create “intimate, poetic observations about humanity.”
- Collaborating artists Katie Hargrave (Chattanooga, TN) and Meredith Laura Lynn (Tallahassee, FL) work in a variety of mediums including photography, paper, and video to create installations examining the “complex narratives that unfold around so-called public land” and the intersection of environmentalism and material culture.
- William Johnson is a photographer based in Chattanooga, TN, who uses black and white photography to explore personal identity by depicting the mundane, everyday aspects of humanity that often go undocumented.
- Althea Murphy-Price is an artist and educator from Knoxville, TN, who specializes in printmaking using synthetic hair and hair accessories to contemplate “the power of hair as a signifier of cultural self-identity.”
The Hunter Museum of American Art collects, studies, and presents American art from the Colonial period to the present day. The collection includes paintings, works on paper, sculpture, photography, mixed media, furniture, and contemporary studio glass covering a range of styles and periods.
A few of the artists represented in the Hunter’s collection include Thomas Cole, Winslow Homer, Robert S. Duncanson, Mary Cassatt, Childe Hassam, Robert Henri, Thomas Hart Benton, Helen Frankenthaler, Louise Nevelson, George Segal, Robert Rauschenberg, Sam Gilliam, and Andy Warhol.
To learn more visit huntermuseum.org.