The Right Plan
Cheekwood's redevelopment begins to bear fruit with new contemporary wing
by Donna Dorian Wall
Long before the downtown Frist Center for the Visual Arts was even a glimmer in its donor’s eye, Cheekwood had fleshed out a redevelopment plan that would have considerably expanded its exhibition space. But as ideas for the Frist Center started to emerge three years ago, Cheekwood began to reexamine its mission. Not wanting to duplicate efforts, Cheekwood director John Wetenhall and president Jane Jerry urged their board to scrap its plans and instead take advantage of the museum’s strongest and most unusual resource—the 55 protected acres that surround the Cheek mansion.
It was a great deal: Trade in the one big addition, and for the same $18 million investment get a woodland sculpture trail, renovate the Bryant Fleming gardens and mansion, and build new gardens for the grounds. As so often happens in life, the planning took a lot more time than the actual doing. Last summer saw the debut of the Robertson Ellis Color Garden and the renovated Robinson Family Water Garden. And by this spring, several more gardens will open to the public, followed by the reopening this fall of the renovated mansion redecorated by Albert Hadley.
Cheekwood’s new galleries have been up and running since Nov. 1, when the new contemporary wing opened in the renovated brick carriage house and horse stables. Standing parallel to each other, these two buildings, which have been quite sensitively restored, are now joined by the newly constructed Frist Learning Center (not to be confused with the downtown Frist Center). Together, the three buildings form a handsome U-shaped complex.
Designed by the Cambridge, Mass., architectural firm Graham Gund, and funded in part by the Frist Foundation, the learning center opens to a glass atrium that offers a view of the sculpture trail just beyond. Doubling as a great hall and party gallery, it houses permanent educational exhibits.
The setting is certainly lovely. The turnaround for cars has been paved over in brick, transforming this space into a snazzy patio for outdoor parties fitting to the grand estate. It also easily doubles as an outdoor theater that, if all goes according to plan, will host art films during the summer.
Perhaps the most innovative use of space can be found in the renovated stables, which have been converted into small galleries just the right size for changing exhibits of installation art. These installations are among Cheekwood’s most state-of-the-art works, and they show that art can assume a variety of forms apart from paintings hung on a wall. In one room, Sylvie Fleury’s “A Journey to Fitness, or How to Lose Ten Pounds in Three Weeks” displays five television sets, each of which plays a different celebrity fitness video. Another stall opens to a piece by Christian Marclay, in which a closed door is set into the far wall, while an audio tape of a conversation gives way to a violent fight.
The one remaining stall, at approximately 600 square feet, is earmarked for the museum’s Temporary Contemporary series, devoted to small, usually monthly exhibits of work by regional artists. For December and January, curator Terri Smith assembled a stunning collection of 20 dye-transfer photographs by William Eggleston. By all accounts, it was the first Nashville exhibition of works by this celebrated Memphian, who is often cited as the preeminent photographer of our time.
Although the photographs on display were taken almost a decade before Eggleston mounted the first color photography show at MoMA in 1976, the recent Cheekwood exhibit was by no means a collection of juvenilia. The pervasiveness of color photography today has rendered Eggleston’s work less shocking than it was two decades ago. The result, though, has only been to the good: Now viewers focus on the images, which in their “retrospective ordinariness” document everyday life with a chilling insight.
Thirty years from now, the large-scale oil paintings of Alabama artist Dale Kennington, the subject of Cheekwood’s current Temporary Contemporary exhibit, are bound to have a somewhat similar, if less piercing, effect. When her show opened on Feb. 5, Kennington spoke to a crowd of more than 300, describing her paintings as “everyday rituals,” as the “merged memories” of our time. One work, “The Cocktail Party,” literally enlarges on such a scene, while the smash of the show, “The Debutantes,” suggests the beauty, anxiety, and vulnerability of African American debutantes.
Although the show is remarkably small in scope, featuring only six paintings, a throng of visitors crammed into the tiny exhibit space. No one showed much interest, however, in Cheekwood’s permanent collection, now housed across the patio in a 1,500-square-foot gallery inside the former carriage house. Perhaps that’s because patrons still remember the longtime Cheekwood staples it houses: Red Grooms’ “Mr. and Mrs. Rembrandt”; Frank O’Hara’s send-up of the Dutch masters; an all-white Robert Ryman; and that famous dynamic duo—Jamie Wyeth’s portrait of Andy Warhol matched by Warhol’s portrait of Wyeth.
As good as each of these works is, it’s still a little shocking to see only 30 of them on display, particularly when the museum’s contemporary holdings number close to 2,500. Wetenhall explains that most of these holdings are works on paper, which will be displayed in the mansion on a rotating basis. Let’s hope this plan doesn’t overlap too much with the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, which itself intends to mount changing exhibitions curated from the permanent collections of Nashville’s various art institutions.
When Cheekwood decided to overhaul its redevelopment plan, it clearly had to make a tradeoff. While the contemporary galleries are less than ideal in size and scope, they offer Nashvillians a chance to engage with new, provocative works of art in a gorgeous setting. Even more important, once the entire redevelopment is complete, Cheekwood will provide Nashvillians with something they cannot enjoy anywhere else: a collection of botanical gardens, a sculpture trail, and extraordinary outdoor sculptures by the likes of Ian Hamilton Finlay and Siah Armajani. There are always tradeoffs in life, and this one, though not without some regrets, is a good one.
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