2027 COOP Gallery Call for Proposals (Due July 15)
2027 COOP Gallery Call for Proposals
Deadline: July 15th, 2026
COOP Gallery in Nashville, TN is accepting exhibition proposals for 2027. Artists and independent curators from across the country are invited to propose solo, two-person, and group exhibitions to be considered for a 3–4 week exhibition in our gallery space. Proposals should demonstrate a thought-out exhibition that considers our gallery's physical space and responds to our 2027 Curatorial Theme: CURRENT. Preference is given to artists who respond with innovative proposals for art installations within our gallery. Selected artists/curators are expected to follow through on their proposal.
Selected proposals will be offered a 3–4 week exhibition in 2027 at COOP Gallery and will receive a one-time $500 honorarium. One exhibition will be selected as the National Open Call Winner and will be offered an exhibition in March, 2027 along with a one-time honorarium of $1,000. Artists not selected for a 2027 exhibition may be considered for future solo and group curated exhibitions.
As Nashville's oldest artist-run project space and curatorial collective, COOP is dedicated to advocating on behalf of under-represented contemporary artists. We offer a non-commercial space for experimentation, where artists can dream, inspire, provoke and foster new growth. We are a non-profit, volunteer organization where programming is open to the public, creating space for expanding Nashville's dialogue with contemporary art — a place where conversations about art and life can occur, a safe space where voices can be heard and underexposed art is seen.
2027 Curatorial Theme: CURRENT
CURRENT considers the visible and invisible forces that shape how we live, create, and relate. From water systems and ocean tides to electrical grids and digital networks, currents carry energy, information, and life itself. They move through bodies, technologies, ecologies, and time.
In an increasingly accelerated world, we ask: What moves us, and what do we move with?
This theme reclaims soft power as the response to the pressures of speed. We are moved not by the frantic push of "linear urgency," but by the quiet intelligence of slowness, care, and tenderness. To move with the current is to embrace soft power as a form of resistance, a deliberate refusal of speed in favor of sustained attention and emotional labor.
Instead of forcing direction, this theme turns toward flow. It invites us to:
Locate ourselves within overlapping ancestral, ecological, and technological timelines.
Practice care as both an intimate and political act, resisting systems that rely on exhaustion and disposability.
Value slowness as protest, engaging in repetition, growth, and decay as intentional, powerful processes.
CURRENT asks what happens when we stop forcing direction and instead begin listening to where the movement already is. It positions attention as a vital currency and care as a political act, inviting us to inhabit cyclical time as a form of resistance. To be in this current is to recognize that the most powerful way to move is with the flow, attending to the quiet, sustained processes that value life over productivity.