Main Library Art Gallery

The Art Gallery at the Main library presents exhibitions that promote access to and stimulate interest in a wide variety of ideas. The gallery is open during the library’s regular hours. Admission to the gallery is free and the public is welcome to all events.

Art Matters Podcast

Tune in for conversations relating to gallery shows at the Library. Get a peek behind the scenes as gallery coordinator, Liz Coleman, talks about the artwork with visiting artists and other interesting individuals.

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Current Exhibitions

Art Makes Place

October 17, 2009 - March 26, 2010
Art Gallery, first floor

Encouraging Partnership between artists and the public, ART MAKES PLACE is a year-long project whereby seven artists made seven temporary, community and performance-based artworks for public spaces in Nashville.

AMP projects address the artist’s role in society and how artists help to create a sense of place and identity within a society. Each project begins with a lecture/workshop with public school students, continues with participation from Vanderbilt University and the larger Nashville community, and results in a temporary artwork presented in public spaces throughout Nashville. The year-long project culminates with this exhibit.

Nashville Cultural Arts Project organized AMP. NCAP collaborative partners include Metro Nashville Public Schools, Frist Center for the Visual Arts and Vanderbilt University. AMP funding and assistance comes from Metro Nashville Arts Commission, Vanderbilt University, Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation and the Frist Center for the Visual Arts. For more information, visit the NCAP website.

Special Event: Art Makes Place Talk with Contemporary Critic Chen Tamir

November 17
4:30 pm - 5:30 pm
Main Library Auditorium

Contemporary critic/curator and executive director of NYC Flux Factory Chen Tamir will give a talk as part of ART MAKES PLACE. For more information about Art Makes Place, visit the AMP website.

The Plan of Nashville: Avenues to a Great City
Celebrating Five Years

October 8, 2009 - January 10, 2010
Courtyard Gallery
Opening reception on October 22 from 4-5:30 pm

This exhibit chronicles the creation of The Plan of Nashville, a community-based, fifty-year vision of how the urban core of Nashville should look and work in the future. The Plan, completed in 2004, was conceived and orchestrated by the Nashville Civic Design Center, a non-profit organization committed to urban design and fostering public participation in the design process.

The visioning process that created The Plan involved more than 800 people in 50 community meetings that took place over two and a half years. The Plan of Nashville: Avenues to a Great City book was published by Vanderbilt University Press in 2005.

The exhibit features more than 100 original drawings, chronicling Nashville’s historic development, plan’s vision for the future, as well as the work the NCDC has done in the past five years since the Plan’s release. This is the first time these drawings have collectively appeared on display in Nashville.

During the process that created the plan, consensus emerged involving Ten Principles to guide public policy, development practice, urban planning, and design. They are:

1. Respect Nashville's natural and built environment.
2. Treat the Cumberland River as central to Nashville's identity -- an asset to be treasured and enjoyed.
3. Reestablish the streets as the principal public space of community and connectivity.
4. Develop a convenient and efficient transportation infrastructure.
5. Provide for a comprehensive, interconnected greenway and park system.
6. Develop an economically viable downtown district as the heart of the region.
7. Raise the quality of the public realm with civic structures and spaces.
8. Integrate public art into the design of the city, its buildings, public works and parks.
9. Strengthen the unique identity of neighborhoods.
10. Infuse visual order into the city by strengthening sightlines to and from civic landmarks and natural features.

Past Exhibitions

DeLoss McGraw & James Agee: The Nashville Public Library Celebrates the 100-Year Anniversary of James Agee's Birth in Tennessee

June 11 - September 27
Art Gallery, first floor

Artist DeLoss McGraw has been inspired by many authors to create artwork exploring themes from their writing. For this series, celebrating the centennial of the birth of James Agee, he focused on Agee's evocative essay "Knoxville: The Summer of 1915" and two additional poems. His imagery of childhood and nature reflect the beauty of this season.

"The gentle sway of Agee's verse, '...talk is quiet, of nothing in particular, of nothing at all in particular, of nothing at all.' I attempt with my painting's format and design to bring the swinging, rocking cadence parallel to the rhythm of the poem and float these images of comfort like swinging, in a front porch bench swing, that I too remember from my childhood." - DeLoss McGraw

Telling the Story: Letterpress Printing and Community

July 1 - September 27, 2009
Courtyard Gallery

Learn more about the history of letterpress printing and where this art is alive and well at two middle Tennessee universities. This exhibit highlights the Franklin printing press at Middle Tennessee State University and Goldsmith Press at Austin Peay State University.

John Adams Unbound

May 16 - June 25, 2009
Courtyard Gallery

Alan LeQuire: Cultural Heroes

January 23 - May 31, 2009
Art Gallery, first floor

Alan LeQuire’s bronze doors welcome our patrons to the Main Library on Church Street. This exhibit is a series of oversized portrait heads. The five people currently represented in the sculptures so far are Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Leadbelly, Paul Robeson, and Woody Guthrie. A new portrait will be unveiled at a reception on February 19.

Open to the Night: Drawings by Sue Mulcahy

September 27, 2008 – January 4, 2009
Art Gallery, first floor

Sue Mulcahy has taught art and exhibited her abstract drawings for more than 35 years, most recently as part of the Shades of Gray exhibit at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts. This solo show of Mulcahy’s drawings explores a rich visual world rendered in black and white.

Beyond the Page: Carol Barton’s Art and Influence

July 13 – August 31, 2008
Art Gallery, first floor

Carol Barton is a book artist, teacher, and curator whose work is exhibited internationally and is in numerous collections, including the Library of Congress, the Museum of Modern Art, the Getty Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Beyond the Page is an exhibit showcasing Carol Barton’s beautiful books alongside books by local artists who have studied with her.

Works with Words

A juried show of Tennessee artists incorporating text and image. Artworks chosen for the exhibition represent a broad range of ways that text can be used in works of art.

The Wilson Limited Editions Collection Purchase Award Winner is "Green X," by Claudia Lee.

Works with Words Artists
Slideshow of Exhibition
Font Walk Map

Funding for the Art Gallery made possible by generous gifts to the Nashville Public Library Foundation.

Exhibition Policy

As an institution that serves all of Davidson County in its branches and main library, the Library will focus on presenting exhibitions that are either, but not limited to:

• related to the particular focus of the Library by highlighting the library’s collections, programs, and services;
• drawn from the Library’s collections and resources;
• specific to the Nashville area including but not limited to exhibitions which would stimulate interest in some aspect of its history;
• co-curated with other institutions, museums, art galleries, libraries and agencies to provide a thematic examination of a particular area of interest to the Library as described in its Mission Statement;
• curated by other institutions, as described above, agencies or individuals and are of the highest quality and provide examination or viewing of a particular area of interest to the Library as described in its Mission Statement.