Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art
Encyclopedia
Cheekwood is a privately funded 55 acres (222,577.3 m²) estate on the western edge of Nashville, Tennessee
that houses the Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art. Formerly the residence of Nashville's Cheek family, the 30000 square feet (2,787.1 m²) Georgian
-style mansion was opened as a museum in 1960.
family. Meanwhile, Joel Cheek, Leslie's cousin, had developed an acclaimed blend of coffee
that was marketed through Nashville's finest hotel, the Maxwell House Hotel
. Legend has it that Theodore Roosevelt
proclaimed the blend "Good to the last drop," which is still a registered trademark for the product. Cheek's extended family, including Leslie and Mabel Cheek, were investors. In 1928, the Postum
Cereals Company (now General Foods
) purchased Maxwell House
's parent company, Cheek-Neal Coffee, for more than $40 million.
With their income secured by the proceeds from the sale, Leslie Cheek bought 100 acre (0.404686 km²) of what was then woodland in West Nashville for a country estate. He hired New York residential and landscape architect, Bryant Fleming
, and gave him control over every detail - from landscaping to interior furnishings. The result was a limestone mansion and extensive formal gardens inspired by the grand English
manors of the 18th century. Fleming's masterpiece, Cheekwood, was completed in 1932.
Leslie Cheek died 2 years after moving into the mansion and Mabel Cheek and their daughter, Huldah Cheek Sharp, lived at Cheekwood until the 1950s when it was offered as a site for a botanical garden and art museum.
The development of the property was spearheaded by the Exchange Club of Nashville, the Horticultural Society of Middle Tennessee and many other civic groups. The Nashville Museum of Art donated its permanent collections and proceeds from the sale of its building to the effort. The new Cheekwood museum opened to the public in 1960.
. 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 1990’s through a multi-million 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. The renovation restored much of the original building, revealing authentic features (wood and marble floors that had been carpeted), and conserving 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 Carrell Woodland Sculpture Trail, a collection of fifteen 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 acres (222,577.3 m²) 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.
Visitors to Cheekwood will enjoy many styles of garden design. An avenue of crape myrtles leads into the Robertson Ellis Color Garden where sweeping curves of colorful flowers border a sloping lawn with a beautiful view of the distant hills. As visitors exit this garden, they pass under eight curved aches covered with colorful vines and planted with a variety of annuals and perennials. Next visitors will enter the Japanese Garden. This is a quiet place for rest and meditation, a refuge from the outside world. The Wills Perennial garden displays new and traditional perennials and includes a steep limestone wall that provides habitat and background for this colorful, full-sun garden. The Martin Boxwood Garden was designed and built by landscape architect Bryant Fleming in the late 1920’s with terraced gardens and extensive plantings of boxwood. This formal garden invites the visitor to be transported to a different era. The Howe Wildflower garden, spectacular in the spring, is a woodland wildflower garden that was originally at the East Nashville home of Cora Howe. This garden was moved to Cheekwood in 1968 along with its stone tool shed, rock wall, and garden ornaments. As visitors move through the gardens, they will next encounter the Burr Terrace Garden. This is an enclosed cottage garden on three levels with many pastel colored perennials, annuals, and shrubs. Exiting the Burr Terrace Garden, visitors will enter the Carell Dogwood Garden. This garden displays many variations in branching patterns, bark, leaf, berry, and the showy bracts characteristic of dogwoods. The Herb Study Garden displays many plants to be touched and smelled, in addition to plants that can be used for cooking, fragrance, dyes, fibers, and cosmetics. Finally, guests will come to the Turner Seasons Garden. This garden focuses on the seasonal aspect of gardens in Tennessee. It features a series of garden rooms, each highlighting a different season with plant collections of special interest
The gardens and collections not only serve to educate, but also to please each visitor’s sense of aesthetic. The gardens are an important horticultural resource for the entire region.
Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. It is located on the Cumberland River in Davidson County, in the north-central part of the state. The city is a center for the health care, publishing, banking and transportation industries, and is home...
that houses the Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art. Formerly the residence of Nashville's Cheek family, the 30000 square feet (2,787.1 m²) Georgian
Georgian architecture
Georgian architecture is the name given in most English-speaking countries to the set of architectural styles current between 1720 and 1840. It is eponymous for the first four British monarchs of the House of Hanover—George I of Great Britain, George II of Great Britain, George III of the United...
-style mansion was opened as a museum in 1960.
The house that coffee built
Christopher Cheek founded a wholesale grocery 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 ClarksvilleClarksville, Tennessee
Clarksville is a city in and the county seat of Montgomery County, Tennessee, United States, and the fifth largest city in the state. The population was 132,929 in 2010 United States Census...
family. Meanwhile, Joel Cheek, Leslie's cousin, had developed an acclaimed blend of coffee
Coffee
Coffee is a brewed beverage with a dark,init brooo acidic flavor prepared from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant, colloquially called coffee beans. The beans are found in coffee cherries, which grow on trees cultivated in over 70 countries, primarily in equatorial Latin America, Southeast Asia,...
that was marketed through Nashville's finest hotel, the Maxwell House Hotel
Maxwell House Hotel
The Maxwell House Hotel was a major hotel in downtown Nashville at which seven US Presidents and other prominent guests stayed. It was built by Colonel John Overton Jr. and named for his wife, Harriet Maxwell Overton. The architect was Isaiah Rogers....
. Legend has it that Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...
proclaimed the blend "Good to the last drop," which is still a registered trademark for the product. Cheek's extended family, including Leslie and Mabel Cheek, were investors. In 1928, the Postum
Postum
Postum was a powdered roasted grain beverage sold by the Kraft Foods company as a coffee substitute. The caffeine-free beverage mix was created by Postum Cereal Company founder C. W. Post in 1895 and marketed as a healthful alternative to coffee...
Cereals Company (now General Foods
General Foods
General Foods Corporation was a company whose direct predecessor was established in the USA by Charles William Post as the Postum Cereal Company in 1895. The name General Foods was adopted in 1929, after several corporate acquisitions...
) purchased Maxwell House
Maxwell House
Maxwell House is a brand of coffee manufactured by a like-named division of Kraft Foods. Introduced in 1892, it is named in honor of the Maxwell House Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee. For many years until the late 1980s it was the largest-selling coffee in the U.S. and is currently second behind...
's parent company, Cheek-Neal Coffee, for more than $40 million.
With their income secured by the proceeds from the sale, Leslie Cheek bought 100 acre (0.404686 km²) of what was then woodland in West Nashville for a country estate. He hired New York residential and landscape architect, Bryant Fleming
Bryant Fleming
Bryant Fleming was a Buffalo, New York-born landscape architect. He graduated from Cornell University in 1901, where he studied horticulture, architecture, architectural history, and art...
, and gave him control over every detail - from landscaping to interior furnishings. The result was a limestone mansion and extensive formal gardens inspired by the grand English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
manors of the 18th century. Fleming's masterpiece, Cheekwood, was completed in 1932.
Leslie Cheek died 2 years after moving into the mansion and Mabel Cheek and their daughter, Huldah Cheek Sharp, lived at Cheekwood until the 1950s when it was offered as a site for a botanical garden and art museum.
The development of the property was spearheaded by the Exchange Club of Nashville, the Horticultural Society of Middle Tennessee and many other civic groups. The Nashville Museum of Art donated its permanent collections and proceeds from the sale of its building to the effort. The new Cheekwood museum opened to the public 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 Association of MuseumsAmerican Association of Museums
The American Association of Museums is a non-profit association that has brought museums together since its founding in 1906, helping develop standards and best practices, gathering and sharing knowledge, and advocating on issues of concern to the museum community...
. 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 1990’s through a multi-million dollar bequest, spans the history of American art. Its strength centers on The Eight
The Eight
The Eight may refer to:*Ashcan School, an American school of painters*The Eight , a Hungarian art movement*The Eight ...
. Other strengths include the world's largest collection of sculptures of William Edmondson
William Edmondson
William Edmondson was an African-American folk art sculptor. In 1937 Edmondson was the first African-American artist to be given a one-person show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.-Biography:...
, photographs by Louise Dahl-Wolfe
Louise Dahl-Wolfe
Louise Emma Augusta Dahl was a noted American photographer. She is known primarily for her work for Harper's Bazaar, in association with fashion editor Diana Vreeland.-Background:...
, 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
William Bradford (painter)
William Bradford was an American romanticist painter, photographer and explorer, originally from Fairhaven, Massachusetts, near New Bedford....
, and new contemporary sculpture for the Trail.
The core holdings of the decorative arts collection include the third-largest Worcester
Worcester
The City of Worcester, commonly known as Worcester, , is a city and county town of Worcestershire in the West Midlands of England. Worcester is situated some southwest of Birmingham and north of Gloucester, and has an approximate population of 94,000 people. The River Severn runs through the...
porcelain in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, and a 650-piece silver collection, spanning the 18th-20th centuries.
The Cheek Mansion is itself considered part of the collection. The renovation restored much of the original building, revealing authentic features (wood and marble floors that had been carpeted), and conserving 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
Larry Rivers was an American artist, musician, filmmaker and occasional actor. Rivers resided and maintained studios in New York City, Southampton, New York and Zihuatanejo, Mexico.-Biography:...
, Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
, Robert Ryman
Robert Ryman
Robert Ryman is an American painter identified with the movements of monochrome painting, minimalism, and conceptual art. He is best known for abstract, white-on-white paintings. He lives and works in New York.-Early life and career:...
, Red Grooms
Red Grooms
Red Grooms is an American multimedia artist best known for his colorful pop-art constructions depicting frenetic scenes of modern urban life...
, and Marylyn Dintenfass
Marylyn Dintenfass
Marylyn Dintenfass 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 everyday sensual pleasures.-Early Life & Influences:Marylyn...
. Additionally, seven small galleries were created in the old horse stable stalls to enable Cheekwood to display installation art.
The Carrell Woodland Sculpture Trail, a collection of fifteen 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
Visitors to Cheekwood will enjoy many styles of garden design. An avenue of crape myrtles leads into the Robertson Ellis Color Garden where sweeping curves of colorful flowers border a sloping lawn with a beautiful view of the distant hills. As visitors exit this garden, they pass under eight curved aches covered with colorful vines and planted with a variety of annuals and perennials. Next visitors will enter the Japanese Garden. This is a quiet place for rest and meditation, a refuge from the outside world. The Wills Perennial garden displays new and traditional perennials and includes a steep limestone wall that provides habitat and background for this colorful, full-sun garden. The Martin Boxwood Garden was designed and built by landscape architect Bryant Fleming in the late 1920’s with terraced gardens and extensive plantings of boxwood. This formal garden invites the visitor to be transported to a different era. The Howe Wildflower garden, spectacular in the spring, is a woodland wildflower garden that was originally at the East Nashville home of Cora Howe. This garden was moved to Cheekwood in 1968 along with its stone tool shed, rock wall, and garden ornaments. As visitors move through the gardens, they will next encounter the Burr Terrace Garden. This is an enclosed cottage garden on three levels with many pastel colored perennials, annuals, and shrubs. Exiting the Burr Terrace Garden, visitors will enter the Carell Dogwood Garden. This garden displays many variations in branching patterns, bark, leaf, berry, and the showy bracts characteristic of dogwoods. The Herb Study Garden displays many plants to be touched and smelled, in addition to plants that can be used for cooking, fragrance, dyes, fibers, and cosmetics. Finally, guests will come to the Turner Seasons Garden. This garden focuses on the seasonal aspect of gardens in Tennessee. It features a series of garden rooms, each highlighting a different season with plant collections of special interest
The gardens and collections not only serve to educate, but also to please each visitor’s sense of aesthetic. The gardens are an important horticultural resource for the entire region.