Tennessee has in its possession a monumental multimillion-dollar piece of art and source of amusement and learning. And Tennessee keeps it in storage.
In 1995, downtown Nashville didn't have much to recommend it. The Predators didn't exist, and the Titans were still the Houston Oilers. The Opry no longer played at the Ryman. The downtown library was functional but uninspiring. Very few people lived in the urban core, and there was almost no reason for tourists or suburbanites to venture there. Then-Mayor Phil Bredesen was desperate to breathe new life into the center of the city. When approached with a proposal for a theme park created by Nashville native and renowned New York pop artist Red Grooms, he jumped on it. Bredesen asked Grooms to shrink the concept, and the Tennessee Fox Trot Carousel was hatched. Rather than ponies, each character on the merry-go-round would be someone or something from state history.
Although the city offered space at the base of Broadway along the west bank of the Cumberland River at the favorable rate of $1 a year for 99 years, the funding for design, construction and installation would have to be raised privately. At the time, Tennessee didn't allow cities to use government bonds for art, and the city's Percent for Public Art Ordinance would not be passed until 2000.
Trudy and Will Byrd — she a successful real estate agent, he a producer in the music business — along with Christie Cookie founder Christie Hauck and attorney Bob Tuke, got to work. They raised the $1.75 million needed to fund the project from various art patrons, most notably Grooms' 90-year-old mother Wilhelmina, and Bredesen himself, a former health care executive. BellSouth, Bridgestone/Firestone, H.G. Hill and Vanderbilt Medical Center were among the organizations that also supported the cause.
Thirty-six characters were selected, from President Andrew Jackson and Olympian Wilma Rudolph to the infamous Bell Witch, the local candy mascot Goo Goo Boy and the dastardly chigger. The Everly Brothers were given a 45 record for a saddle, while H.G. Hill offered a ride on a grocery cart. Rabbi Isadore Lewinthal carried a temple on his head, and frontiersman Davy Crockett wrestled a bear. Painted panels also told stories from state history, with depictions of the Grand Ole Opry, Andrew Jackson's horse Truxton and the Fisk Jubilee Singers. The monumental work would be 44 feet in diameter, placed in a pavilion 80 feet wide. It was colorful, whimsical, humorous and joyful.
"Ultimately, when this is up and running, it will be as well known and as big a symbol for the community as the Parthenon," Councilman Ronnie Steine told a newspaper reporter.
After three years of planning and two years of construction, it was ready. Life magazine ran a piece on the carousel just before the installation was complete, and The New York Times heralded its opening in November 1998. "Tapping into the vivid folklore of his Nashville childhood seems to have reinvigorated Mr. Grooms," wrote the Times' Martin Filler, "whose free-wheeling esthetic and eagerness to please a mass public led the art historian Daniel Wheeler to call him 'a latter-day P.T. Barnum or Walt Disney, albeit crossed with Marcel Duchamp.' "
Locals and tourists — 6,000 of them — made the trek downtown to see the carousel during its opening weekend, to ogle the caricatures and take rides for $1.50 apiece. Metro Parks operated an outdoor skating rink next door, and the Opryland Hotel shuttled guests downtown by water taxi. The proud carousel board projected that revenue would spin off $26,000 for arts scholarships in the first year, and double shortly thereafter.
But then, within three years, Opryland discontinued the water taxi, and Second Avenue tourism dwindled. Downtown was depressed. The carousel languished. From a high of 10,000 riders a month, it was down to 2,000. Rides had gone up to $2, but revenue was not covering expenses, and the carousel was more than $300,000 in debt. First it simply closed. It sat for a year-and-a-half while discussions ensued about where to move it — perhaps it would attract more traffic at the Nashville Zoo, the Frist or Centennial Park. In 2004 a deal was struck with the Tennessee State Museum, which paid off the outstanding debt and accessioned the piece, thought at the time to be worth more than $3 million. The carousel was dismantled and carried to museum storage. According to papers shared by the museum staff, the intent was to reinstall the carousel once a new state museum was built.
As governor from 2003 to 2011, Phil Bredesen hoped to get that new state museum accomplished. The basement of the Tennessee Performing Arts Center has proven to be a cramped and inadequate venue for displays of the state's vast collection of historic artifacts and works of art. But Bredesen wrestled with the state's health care spending issues, and ultimately national economic collapse. The timing wasn't right to pour millions into the project. And the years went by. The Tennessee Fox Trot Carousel has now been in storage for 12 years. Individual pieces have come out for various exhibits, such as a Red Grooms show at the state museum, though mostly it has remained behind closed doors.
But here's the kicker: Flush with a surplus, Gov. Haslam finally funded the long-awaited new structure for the Tennessee State Museum this year at the Bicentennial Mall. The new museum is scheduled to open fall 2018. The state budgeted $120 million, and Haslam promised to lead private fundraising efforts for an additional $40 million. Legislators at the April 6 groundbreaking were overjoyed. Not included in the $160 million project? The carousel.
There is a pervasive sentiment that the carousel is too big and too expensive to be a part of the new museum plan, though people working on the project aren't sure how big or how expensive. The museum has a blueprint of the original pavilion. As for cost, a dollar figure is finally being tallied now, months after the $160 million budget was devised and funds earmarked.
"It's not in the program," says project coordinator Mark Cate. "The only way it's going to make it in is if we have a donor or donors that give above and beyond the 160 [million dollars] or we come down enough in our budget to where we can accommodate it in the 160."
"I think the carousel needs to be included at some point," says Bobby Thomas, chairman of the Tennessee State Museum Foundation. "It's very much on the mind of the commission and the foundation, but in the planning of the new museum, it is not a part of the initial building of the new museum."
Why isn't the carousel included in the $160 million budget?
"I don't know the answer to that," says Thomas.
The fate of even more years in storage is acceptable to House Speaker Beth Harwell, who sits on the Douglas Henry State Museum Commission Board.
"We can plan for it in the future," Harwell says. "It would be a nice addition, but our priority now is to get the building built."
The carousel's colors still look vibrant, and it seems that most of the cost of resurrecting it will be in purchasing a new merry-go-round mechanism and building a pavilion. The structure could be very simple, says Trudy Byrd, a longtime friend of Grooms' who is hoping the carousel will somehow make it into current plans.
"It'll be a great draw to the museum and the Bicentennial Mall," says Byrd. "And Red's still around to help with the restoration."
For his part, Bredesen, who has returned to private life but has promised to help Gov. Haslam raise funds for the museum, favors putting the carousel back in its original spot at the base of the now-bustling Broadway. He would like the state museum to deaccession the piece, with Metro building the pavilion.
"The city could do it," says Bredesen. "It's a modest investment in the scheme of things. It would be one of the things people remember about coming to Nashville."
Grooms, now 78, is hoping the carousel will be back one way or another. "I wouldn't care if we put a canvas top on it and use it in the summer, and then just packed it with the weather," he says. "It's a whole generation that has missed the whole thing, and I hope it would have been entertaining for them. [My wife] Lysiane and I are being patient and waiting for something good to happen."
This memorable, iconic amusement and history lesson, created by one of the most acclaimed artists to come out of our state, remains in a cell block, its lively characters waving their hats at the walls. More than half a dozen carousel figures are scheduled to be refurbished for a show at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art in October. But a carousel is meant for riding, not viewing. And certainly not for filling a storage room.
