Cheekwood is a historic estate on the western edge of

Nashville, Tennessee Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat, seat of Davidson County, Tennessee, Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the List of muni ...

that houses the Cheekwood Estate & Gardens. Formerly the residence of Nashville's Cheek family, the

Georgian Georgian may refer to: Common meanings * Anything related to, or originating from Georgia (country) ** Georgians, an indigenous Caucasian ethnic group ** Georgian language, a Kartvelian language spoken by Georgians **Georgian scripts, three scrip ...

-style mansion was opened as a botanical garden and art museum in 1960.

History

Christopher Cheek founded a wholesale

grocery A grocery store ( AE), grocery shop ( BE) or simply grocery is a store that primarily retails a general range of food products, which may be fresh or packaged. In everyday U.S. usage, however, "grocery store" is a synonym for supermarket, an ...

business in Nashville in the 1880s. His son, Leslie Cheek, joined him as a partner, and by 1915 was president of the family-owned company. Leslie's wife, Mabel Wood, was a member of a prominent

Clarksville, Tennessee Clarksville is the county seat of Montgomery County, Tennessee, United States. It is the fifth-largest city in the state behind Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville, and Chattanooga. The city had a population of 166,722 as of the 2020 United States ce ...

, family. Meanwhile, Joel Owsley Cheek, Leslie's cousin, had developed an acclaimed blend of

coffee Coffee is a drink prepared from roasted coffee beans. Darkly colored, bitter, and slightly acidic, coffee has a stimulant, stimulating effect on humans, primarily due to its caffeine content. It is the most popular hot drink in the world. S ...

that was marketed through Nashville's finest hotel, the

Maxwell House Hotel The Maxwell House Hotel was a major hotel in downtown Nashville. Because of its stature, seven US Presidents and other prominent guests stayed there over the years. It was built by Colonel John Overton Jr. and named for his wife, Harriet (Maxwell) ...

. Cheek's extended family, including Leslie and Mabel Cheek, were investors. In 1928, the

Postum Postum () is a powdered roasted grain beverage popular as a coffee substitute. The caffeine-free beverage was created by Post Consumer Brands, Post Cereal Company founder C. W. Post in 1895 and marketed as a healthier alternative to coffee. Post w ...

Cereals Company (now

General Foods General Foods Corporation was a company whose direct predecessor was established in the United States by Charles William Post as the Postum Cereal Company in 1895. The company changed its name to "General Foods" in 1929, after several corporate ...

) purchased

Maxwell House Maxwell House is an American brand of coffee manufactured by a like-named division of Kraft Heinz in North America and JDE Peet's in the rest of the world. Introduced in 1892 by wholesale grocer Joel Owsley Cheek, it was named in honor of the Ma ...

's parent company, Cheek-Neal Coffee, for more than $40 million. After the sale of the family business, Leslie Cheek bought of woodland in West Nashville for a country estate. He hired

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

residential and landscape architect

Bryant Fleming Bryant Fleming (July 19, 1877 – September 19, 1946) was an American architect and landscape architect. Early life Fleming was born on July 19, 1877 in Buffalo, New York. He graduated from Cornell University in 1901, where he studied horticulture ...

to design the house and gardens, and gave him full control over every detail of the project, including interior furnishings. The resulting

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms whe ...

mansion and extensive formal gardens were completed in 1932. The estate design was inspired by the grand

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

manors of the 18th century. Leslie Cheek died just two years after moving into the mansion. Mabel Cheek and their daughter, Huldah Cheek Sharp, lived at Cheekwood until the 1950s, when Huldah Sharp and her husband offered the property as a site for a botanical garden and art museum. The

Exchange Club The National Exchange Club – a service organization with 700 clubs and more than 21,000 members throughout the United States and Puerto Rico – celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2011. Founded in 1911 in Detroit, Michigan, by businessmen who w ...

of Nashville, the Horticultural Society of Middle Tennessee and other civic groups led the redevelopment of the property aided by funds raised from the sale of the former building of the defunct Nashville Museum of Art. The new Cheekwood museum opened in 1960.

Art museum

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 American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

. 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 William Edmondson (c. 1874–1951) was the first African-American folk art sculptor to be given a one-person show exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City (1937). Biography Edmondson was born sometime in December 1874 on the Compt ...

, photographs by

Louise Dahl-Wolfe Louise Dahl-Wolfe (November 19, 1895 – December 11, 1989) was an American photographer. She is known primarily for her work for ''Harper's Bazaar'', in association with fashion editor Diana Vreeland. Background Louise Emma Augusta Dahl was bor ...

, and a vast variety of post-

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

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 Worcester may refer to: Places United Kingdom * Worcester, England, a city and the county town of Worcestershire in England ** Worcester (UK Parliament constituency), an area represented by a Member of Parliament * Worcester Park, London, Englan ...

porcelain in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

, 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 Larry Rivers (born Yitzroch Loiza Grossberg) (1923 – 2002) was an American artist, musician, filmmaker, and occasional actor. Considered by many scholars to be the "Godfather" and "Grandfather" of Pop art, he was one of the first artists ...

Andy Warhol Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationsh ...

Robert Ryman Robert Ryman (May 30, 1930February 8, 2019) was an American painter identified with the movements of monochrome painting, minimalism, and conceptual art. He was best known for abstract, white-on-white paintings. He lived and worked in New York C ...

Red Grooms Red Grooms (born Charles Rogers Grooms on June 7, 1937) is an American multimedia artist best known for his colorful pop-art constructions depicting frenetic scenes of modern urban life. Grooms was given the nickname "Red" by Dominic Falcone ...

, and

Marylyn Dintenfass Marylyn Dintenfass (born 1943) is an American painter, printmaker, and sculptor. She is primarily known for her oil paintings, which use a dynamic color palette and lexicon of gestural imagery to explore dualities in the human experience and eve ...

. 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.

Botanical garden

Extending across the grounds from the Museum of Art, the Botanical Garden encompasses the entire site with an emphasis on display, education, and study. The plant collections include

boxwood ''Buxus'' is a genus of about seventy species in the family Buxaceae. Common names include box or boxwood. The boxes are native to western and southern Europe, southwest, southern and eastern Asia, Africa, Madagascar, northernmost South ...

conifer Conifers are a group of conifer cone, cone-bearing Spermatophyte, seed plants, a subset of gymnosperms. Scientifically, they make up the phylum, division Pinophyta (), also known as Coniferophyta () or Coniferae. The division contains a single ...

crape myrtle ''Lagerstroemia'' (), commonly known as crape myrtle (also spelled crepe myrtle or crêpe myrtle), is a genus of around 50 species of deciduous and evergreen trees and shrubs native to the Indian subcontinent, southeast Asia, northern Australia ...

daffodil ''Narcissus'' is a genus of predominantly spring flowering perennial plants of the amaryllis family, Amaryllidaceae. Various common names including daffodil,The word "daffodil" is also applied to related genera such as '' Sternbergia'', ''Is ...

daylily A daylily or day lily is a flowering plant in the genus ''Hemerocallis'' , a member of the family Asphodelaceae, subfamily Hemerocallidoideae. Despite the common name, it is not in fact a lily. Gardening enthusiasts and horticulturists have long ...

dogwood ''Cornus'' is a genus of about 30–60 species of woody plants in the family Cornaceae, commonly known as dogwoods, which can generally be distinguished by their blossoms, berries, and distinctive bark. Most are deciduous trees or shrub ...

fern A fern (Polypodiopsida or Polypodiophyta ) is a member of a group of vascular plants (plants with xylem and phloem) that reproduce via spores and have neither seeds nor flowers. The polypodiophytes include all living pteridophytes except t ...

herb In general use, herbs are a widely distributed and widespread group of plants, excluding vegetables and other plants consumed for macronutrients, with savory or aromatic properties that are used for flavoring and garnishing food, for medicinal ...

holly ''Ilex'' (), or holly, is a genus of over 570 species of flowering plants in the family Aquifoliaceae, and the only living genus in that family. ''Ilex'' has the most species of any woody dioecious angiosperm genus. The species are evergreen o ...

hosta ''Hosta'' (, syn. ''Funkia'') is a genus of plants commonly known as hostas, plantain lilies and occasionally by the Japanese name gibōshi. Hostas are widely cultivated as shade-tolerant foliage plants. The genus is currently placed in the fa ...

hydrangea ''Hydrangea'', () commonly named the hortensia, is a genus of over 75 species of flowering plants native to Asia and the Americas. By far the greatest species diversity is in eastern Asia, notably China, Korea, and Japan. Most are shrubs tall, ...

Japanese maple ''Acer palmatum'', commonly known as Japanese maple, palmate maple, or smooth Japanese maple (Japanese: ''irohamomiji'', , or ''momiji'', (栴), is a species of woody plant native to Japan, Korea, China, eastern Mongolia, and southeast Russia. ...

magnolia ''Magnolia'' is a large genus of about 210 to 340The number of species in the genus ''Magnolia'' depends on the taxonomic view that one takes up. Recent molecular and morphological research shows that former genera ''Talauma'', ''Dugandiodendro ...

, Southeastern US natives,

redbud ''Cercis'' is a genus of about 10 species in the subfamily Cercidoideae of the pea family Fabaceae, native to warm temperate regions. It contains small deciduous trees or large shrubs commonly known as redbuds. They are characterised by simpl ...

, and

trillium ''Trillium'' (trillium, wakerobin, toadshade, tri flower, birthroot, birthwort, and sometimes "wood lily") is a genus of about fifty flowering plant species in the family Melanthiaceae. ''Trillium'' species are native to temperate regions of No ...

Other attractions

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.

History

Art museum

Botanical garden

Other attractions

See also