When it comes to cities birthing some of the most innovative and interesting contemporary art around the globe, historical hotbeds of artistic innovation like New York, London and Paris may immediately spring to mind. Even newer kids on the creative block like Los Angeles, Mexico City and Hong Kong have solidified their places as art destinations these days. But there’s plenty happening off the well-worn art pilgrimage path. Here are five cities witnessing big art booms. Not only do these worldwide sites offer unique art experiences, but they are also being credited with pushing the international contemporary art scene in exciting new directions.

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Brandon Donahue is a rad artist whose exhibit RIP is currently hanging at Elephant Gallery. I wrote this story for Vice.com about Elephant and its artists, including Brandon. We discuss his Basketball Blooms, but mostly stick to RIP, Brandon's experience working as an airbrush artist, and the way to memorialize victims of gun violence while also celebrating their lives. And mussels.

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This poem fragment makes an appearance in the final pages of the book as an epigraph from younger sister Boo Boo to brother Seymour to commemorate his wedding day and resurrects an age-old pastoral sentiment among a modern audience. Through the use of metaphor, Salinger cleverly interweaves the structure of carpentry and the emotion of matrimony to represent the weighty potential of what is yet to come for the newlyweds, yes, but more important for the cast of characters as a whole who do not yet know what the reader knows: that Seymour will commit suicide a few years later.

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It's way cooler than country music and bachelorette parties. Anybody who says Nashville, Tennessee, doesn't have an interesting art scene definitely hasn't gone to a gallery party where there’s black lasagna.

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For renowned photographer Jack Spencer, Mississippi-born and Nashville-residing, the image captured by his camera, be it a digital file or a negative, has always been a jumping-off point. It’s in the “wet” or “digital” darkroom, as he refers to them, where those images come alive.

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Big bucks aren’t necessary to buy a piece of high-caliber contemporary American art: that’s the premise of this light flooded art gallery with soaring wood ceilings, which the seasoned art gallerist David Lusk opened in a former truck mechanic business in 2014. In fact, it was this venue from the Memphis-based gallerist that helped generate interest in the neighborhood. Mr. Lusk’s collection includes paintings, photographs and sculptures, and he takes pride in having a close relationship with the close to three dozen artists he sells. Several Nashville natives are part of the mix, including Kit Reuther, who is known for her abstract paintings and sculptures in muted tones. Prices from $500.

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Maysey Craddock’s landscape paintings embrace liminality: the sacred, transformative threshold between what was and what is to come. The Memphis artist’s recent work explores the tenuous borders between land and water, particularly the vanishing coastlines along Perdido Bay in Alabama, Lake Martin in Louisiana and wetlands along the Mississippi River, landscapes that because of natural processes and human influence, constantly shift between disintegration and reclamation.

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Now that you’ve fuelled up for the day, it’s time to hit up some galleries. First up is the intimate contemporary art space, David Lusk Memphis. Displaying a wide range of styles and techniques, David Lusk aims to promote up-and-coming local and national artists. Previous artists include William Eggleston, Leslie Holt, and Dwayne Butcher. Check out the gallery’s past and upcoming exhibitions here.

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Nearby David Lusk Gallery, based in Memphis but finding itself comfortably at home in Tennessee, featured a late-2017 exhibition from Berlin-native Anne Siems in a series of striking and intimate abstract paintings of women and children (“Two Corals” is a masterpiece). Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi, the Johannesburg-based artist who has exhibits at the Tate Modern and Fondation Louis Vuitton in her growing portfolio, explores the lives of the exiled (including her own father) in “The Beginning of Stories,” on view at Seed Space, founded in 2010 by Tennessee-based artist Adrienne Outlaw.

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Gorgeous … but lonely. This is the work of American artist Jared Small. All of these dark ‘n stormy oil paintings are part of his latest show, titled ‘Dimension’. If you happen to be in or near Memphis. you can see this work and meet Jared… tomorrow, Saturday January 20th at 11am, Jared will be doing a talk at the  David Lusk Gallery in Memphis {97 Tillman St.}. Pop by if you can!

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