Head to the Frist Art Museum’s upper-level galleries, and you’ll come face-to-face with a 500-year-old knight in shining armor. OK, so it’s not an actual knight. The armor, however, is the real deal.

Medieval armor has a bad reputation when it comes to how much movement is possible for a fully-armored and outfitted knight. Chances are you’ve bought into the notion that it resulted in clunky, slow, ...

One historical theme to be gleaned from the Bowers Museum’s new exhibit, “Knights in Armor,” is the 17th century invention that led to the downfall of armor and its accompanying weaponry as effective ...