DAVID BUTLER

David Butler, director of the Knoxville Museum of Art from 2006-2023, reflects his environment of Appalachia through impressionistic drawings. Throughout the course of Butler’s tenure, he served as a board member of Tennesseans for the Arts; a panelist for the Tennessee Arts Commission; and a peer reviewer for the American Alliance of Museums, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. He was president of the Southeastern Museums Conference (SEMC) from 2014 to 2016 and received the James R. Short Award for service to the museum profession from the SEMC in 2022.

Decades of working in the arts inspired him to emulate the beauty around him through pastel studies. He captures the essence of vitality with mark-making, evoking the motion of the wind through the trees. His drawing conveys the illusion of forms in light and space while maintaining its integrity and character as a flat pattern.