Chattanooga has done well. The Hunter Museum of American Art there is pretty wonderful. They’ve got an exhibit of Eudora Welty’s photographs on exhibit and another TVA photography exhibit doing on, and has a nice permanent collection between very, very different buildings. I was really looking for them to include Southern visionary art of which I don’t remember a single piece — even the Tennessee Aquarium a short walk away has a display — but even with that, it was great.
Here’s part one of two — in this one, the buildings and some of the older pieces (more modern next time):
The museum is on this bluff overlooking the Tennessee River:
This walkway took me directly to Av and the boys who were playing at the Aquarium.
“Free Money” by Tom Otterness, which is to depict everyday working people dancing atop a sackful of money:
This is Deborah Butterfield’s ‘Boreal’ (2001) which appears as driftwood but is actually cast bronze with a patina.
Walking up to it, I really thought it was one of Heather Jansch‘s driftwood horses, like these we found at Alys Beach:
Main entrance
Here, connected, is the Faxon-Hunter mansion, which was once home to the owner of the world’s first Coca-Cola bottling company.
The main, modern entrance includes the exhibit on view now through July 12, 2015 — Eudora Welty and the Segregated South. Next, one walks into the Faxon-Hunter Mansion for the early part of the collection.
Drink in the moulding.
‘Ruth Gleaning’ by Randolph Rogers
‘The Huntsman’s Door’ circa 1890 by Richard LaBarre Goodwin. It was the first art purchased by the museum.
Mary Cassatt’s circa 1890 ‘Baby Bill in His Cap and Shift, Held by His Nurse’:
Grandma Moses’ 1947 ‘Over the River to Grandma’s House on Thanksgiving’:
Thomas Hart Benton’s 1943 ‘The Wreck of the Ole ’97’. Benton collected folk music and based this painting on the song inspired by this actual train incident.
Marsden Hartley’s 1938-39 ‘Chanties to the North’:
and to set us up for part two, Charles Joseph Biederman’s 1977-78 #17, as viewed from an angle:
