Evan Roosevelt Brown was the newest of newbies in the art gallery game when he started curating the Nka Gallery for Slim & Husky’s back in 2021. But Brown was a natural, and Nka brought visitors from around the city to the North Nashville gallery, where the curator’s programming made Nka a foundational venue in the establishment of the Buchanan Arts District. When Brown lost the Nka space — it’s now home to No Free Coffee — he didn’t miss a beat: The curator started organizing art tours of First Saturday events; he programmed temporary takeovers of blue-chip local galleries like Zeitgeist; and he turned a retail storefront into an experimental movie theater in one of the standout pop-up displays at The Arcade this past summer. Nashville’s real estate prices mean we’re only going to see more nomadic curators roaming the rugged hinterlands of the city’s contemporary art scene, and Brown is already mapping the territories and living off the land.
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