Mark Scala is the chief curator at the Frist Art Museum. His major exhibitions have focused on the subject of bodily vulnerability in the context of cultural transformation in global contemporary art. Chaos and Awe: Painting for the 21st Century (2018) was an international survey of artists who convey a sense of anxiety and sublimity arising from the contemplation of an increasingly unstable social imaginary. Phantom Bodies: The Human Aura in Art (2015) explored the subjects of physical absence, loss, and remembrance in contemporary art. Fairy Tales, Monsters, and the Genetic Imagination (2012) considered the theme of the hybrid body in folklore, science fiction, and genetic engineering. Paint Made Flesh (2009) featured expressionistic figure painting from the U.S., Germany, and Britain since World War II in which the experience of trauma, internal and external, is borne out in representations of the damaged body. Scala is currently working on the exhibition Matthew Ritchie: A Garden in the Flood, scheduled to open in November of 2022.
Scala has also organized exhibitions of the works of Diana Al-Hadid, Inka Essenhigh, Alicia Henry, Angelo Filomeno, Simen Johan, Ragnar Kjartansson, Osgemeos, Vesna Pavlovic, Jaume Plensa, Tokohiro Sato, Mary Sibande, Do-Ho Suh, Anna Maria Tavares, U-Ram Choe, Camille Utterback, and Guido van der Werve, among others.
Scala received his MA in art history/museum studies in 1988 and MFA in painting in 1979, both from Virginia Commonwealth University. Before coming to the Frist Art Museum in 2000, Scala was curator at the Art Museum of Western Virginia (1990-2000). From 2008-2013, he held the position of senior guest lecturer at Vanderbilt University, teaching the course Sources of Contemporary Art. He has been a critic for The New Art Examiner and has been interviewed by Huffington Post (see Lilia Ziamou, “Mark Scala: On Curating Thematic Exhibitions for the Body”) and NPR (see Susan Stanberg https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105544892).
Scala has been a member of the Association of Art Museum Curators since 2001 and served on its board from 2010-2016.
