MAGICAL, MYSTICAL, HISTORICAL

The tales behind Music City’s sculptures

BY MARY SKINNER | PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRISTOPHER HUGHES

Visitors from all over the world come to immerse themselves in Nashville’s dynamic music scene. Once here, they will also find themselves captivated by Music City’s ever-growing vibrant visual arts, from wall murals to public sculptures, art galleries to museums. Each piece has a fascinating story to tell; read on to learn more about our favorite outdoor art sculptures around Nashville.

A whimsical, colorful figure winds its way around Fannie Mae Dees Park as children climb over its humps and bumps. It has been named “The Dragon” by native Nashvillians, and tucked up under one of its humps is the “Baby Dragon.” When this artwork was first imagined by Chilean artist Pedro Silva in the late 1970s, he visualized a large mosaic sea serpent.

This lively piece was a community project designed to bring together neighbors and help heal neighborhood strife that resulted from an urban renewal project. Silva and hundreds of community volunteers designed small scenes with mosaic tiles on the sculpture’s surface. The project was completed in 1981 and the park was officially named Fannie Mae Dees Park in memory of a beloved neighbor and activist. Locals choose to ignore the naming origins

Alan LeQuire's "Musica" (left) is a visual representation of music. "Ghost Ballet" (right) is an icon on the Cumberland River. Opposite: "The Dragon" beckons in Fannie Mae Dees Park.

and call it instead “The Dragon” in “Dragon Park.” It’s become the local mascot for this area of town, which is also home to Hillsboro Village. Visitors will see a dragon mural along the wall on Belcourt Avenue and the logo of a dragon on a nearby school sign. The dragons were restored in 2018 so they could be enjoyed for generations to come.

Music Row connects Hillsboro Village to downtown, and at the top of Music Row in the center of a traffic roundabout is the impressive bronze sculpture “Musica.” Designed by Nashville artist and sculptor Alan LeQuire and unveiled in 2003, the composition features nine colossal nude figures dancing in a circle. The 10-ton work of art is currently the largest sculpture group in the United States. According to LeQuire, “the sculpture represents all forms of music without reference to any one form or style. It is meant to provide a visual icon for the area and for the city as a whole.”

Using live models, whose facial and bodily features he depicted, LeQuire created two Caucasian women and one Caucasian man, an African American man and woman, one Asian-American woman, a Native American man and a Hispanic man and woman.

“Musica” is likely the most discussed of all of Music City’s local art. Conservative citizens have objected to the public display of nude figures, while local pranksters often dress the statues to depict certain events, such as plaid kilts and scarfs for St. Patrick’s Day and face masks during the pandemic lockdown.

Swirling through the air on the east bank of the Cumberland River, “Ghost Ballet” stands 100 feet tall, 100 feet wide and 60 feet deep. Sculptor and conceptual artist Alice Aycock, a resident of New York City, was selected to create a piece to focus attention on the river, attract pedestrians both day and night and foster a collective memory based on place. The sculpture was installed in 2007 after a national competition to build the very first piece of art commissioned under Nashville’s “Percent for Art” ordinance, which sets aside one percent of Metro’s capital projects budget for public art and is administered by the Metro Nashville Art Commission.

Aycock has described her work as static animation, seeming to change and suggest a sort of dance as you move around the sculpture. The work can be viewed from Riverfront Park at the end of Lower Broadway. An excellent example of reuse, “Ghost Ballet” rests on a gantry crane, once used to build and launch barges. In 2010, Americans for the Arts named it one of the best 50 public projects of the last 50 years in Public Art network’s “Year in Review Retrospective.”

The marriage of history and art is reflected through the “Witness Walls,” which pays homage to Nashville’s Civil Rights story.

"Witness Walls" (left) depicts life in the 1960s in segregated Nashville. "The Gathering" (right) brought together members of the community to embrace the arts.

California landscape architect and artist Walter Hood designed the sculptural concrete walls with period images to create a site of remembrance and commemoration. Installed in 2017 beside the Davidson County Courthouse, “Witness Walls” conveys the turbulent times of a 1960s segregated downtown Nashville when the civil rights sitins brought national attention to the city.

In an effort to segregate the lunch counters in the city’s downtown business district, nonviolent protests in the form of sit-ins were organized by Black students from local colleges and the Nashville Christian Leadership Council. More than 150 students were eventually arrested for refusing to vacate store lunch counters when ordered to do so by police. At trial, the students were represented by a group of 13 lawyers, headed by Alexander Looby. In April 1960, Looby's home was bombed, although he escaped uninjured. Soon after a large demonstration took place with more than 3,000 participants marching from the Tennessee State Capitol to the City Hall, which is now known as the Davidson County Courthouse, where the “Witness Walls” can be viewed.

The protestors met Mayor Ben West on the nearby steps, and West conceded that segregation was immoral. This was the first major step in desegregating not just lunch counters but many other public places in the city. Many of these students went on to become major leaders in the American Civil Rights Movement: John Lewis, Diane Nash and Bernard Lafayette, Jr., among them.

Just west of downtown you will find Nashville’s first art park, named for William Edmondson (1874-1951), the city's celebrated self-taught sculptor and son of former slaves. Edmondson, who said that his carvings of figures and animals were divinely inspired, was the first African American to have a solo show at New York's Museum of Modern Art, in 1937. Though you won’t find any of his sculptures in this park (they can be found at the nearby Tennessee State Museum and at Cheekwood Botanical Gardens) you will find some of the city’s best pieces of sculpture including “The Gathering” by Sherri Warren Hunter, a renowned artist from Bell Buckle, Tennessee.

“The Gathering” is the result of another community art project. It was originally created and located on Music Row in front of the Oasis House, an organization which helps young people in crisis. The four pieces of sculpture were designed by Hunter, who turned their creation into a community event—she recruited volunteers and taught them how to cut and set mosaic.

In 2013, the Oasis Center donated the sculptures to the Metro Arts Commission; the pieces were moved to Edmonson Park and restored to their original glory.

For visitors interested in taking a narrated tour of Music City’s public art, a free digital tour can be found at nashvillesites.org.