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55-acre historic estate on the western edge of Nashville, Tennessee that houses the Cheekwood Estate & Gardens which includes a 30,000-square-foot Georgian-style mansion opened as a botanical garden and art museum
General Information
Closed Mondays and major holidays including Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day.
Gardens + Mansion: Adults $26–$29
Seniors (65+): $18–$29 depending on admission type
Students: $16–$29 depending on admission type
Youth (ages 3–17): $13–$22
Children ages 2 and under: Free
How to Get There
From Nashville (8 mi): Take West End Avenue/US-70S west from downtown Nashville, continue onto Harding Pike, turn onto Forrest Park Drive, and follow signs to Cheekwood Estate & Gardens at 1200 Forrest Park Dr.
Overview
Cheekwood is a 55-acre (22 ha) historic estate on the western edge of Nashville, Tennessee that houses the Cheekwood Estate & Gardens. Formerly the residence of Nashville's Cheek family, the 30,000-square-foot (2,800 m2) Georgian-style mansion was opened as a botanical garden and art museum in 1960.
Cheekwood's art collection was founded in 1959 upon the holdings of the former Nashville Museum of Art and is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums. The core holdings include broad collections of American art; American and British decorative arts; contemporary art, especially outdoor sculpture acquired for the Woodland Sculpture Trail.
Cheekwood's American art collection includes 600 paintings and 5,000 prints, drawings and photographs. The collection, assembled in the 1980s and early 1990s through a multimillion-dollar bequest, spans the history of American art. Its strength centers on The Eight. Other strengths include the world's largest collection of sculptures of William Edmondson, photographs by Louise Dahl-Wolfe, and a vast variety of post-Second World War prints. Recently, the Museum has pursued a consciously focused acquisition process, having added paintings by James Hamilton, William Bradford, and new contemporary sculpture for the Trail.
The core holdings of the decorative arts collection include the third-largest Worcester porcelain in the United States, and a 650-piece silver collection, spanning the 18th-20th centuries.
The Cheek Mansion is itself considered part of the collection. A year-long renovation, completed in June 2017, restored much of the original building, which revealed authentic features (wood and marble floors that had been carpeted), and conserved historical architectural motifs, such as the illusionist murals that line the main corridor.
The Contemporary Art collection, housed in the galleries created out of the estate's original garage and stables, is small but of high quality, including paintings by Larry Rivers, Andy Warhol, Robert Ryman, Red Grooms, and Marylyn Dintenfass. Additionally, seven small galleries were created in the old horse stable stalls to enable Cheekwood to display installation art.
The Ann & Monroe Carell Jr. Family Sculpture Trail, a collection of ten sculptures by international artists, extends the contemporary art collection into nature, focusing on a kind of intimate, outdoor art not commonly found in American museums.
Extending across the grounds from the Museum of Art, the Botanical Garden encompasses the entire 55-acre (22 ha) site with an emphasis on display, education, and study. The plant collections include boxwood, conifer, crape myrtle, daffodil, daylily, dogwood, fern, herb, holly, hosta, hydrangea, Japanese maple, magnolia, Southeastern US natives, redbud, and trillium.
In addition to the Museum and the Botanical Garden, Cheekwood operates two gift shops, and a restaurant called the Cafe 1929 which is located in the Frist Learning Center.
This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art" which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0
