2012 Parthenon Gallery Exhibits
Permanent Collection:
The James M. Cowan Collection
Origins of Nashville's Parthenon
Greek Theater - To be announced
Educational Tours and Programming
Department at the Parthenon focuses on state and national curriculum standards. The Parthenon can be used to explore art, architecture, science and even mathematical problems. All K-12 groups are guided by a Parthenon staff member or docent. Instructors are asked to make a reservation at least seven days before visiting the Parthenon with a school group.
Please remember, we must limit tour groups in the Parthenon to 60 students, split into two groups of 30. Schools wishing to bring larger groups must schedule multiple days.
There are many tools throughout the Parthenon site than can be utilized in the classroom. Visit the Parthenon website for lesson plans and other resources.
2012 Symposia Lecture Schedule
Tuesday, January 24
Music, Healing and Sacred Space in Classical Greece: A New Interpretation of the Thymele of Epidauros with Dr. Peter Schultz, Concordia College
Tuesday, February 21
Clear Light and Shining Ruins: William J. Stillman’s Acropolis with Dr. Andrew Szegedy-Maszak, Wesleyan University
Tuesday, March 20
The Lost Eagle: The Untold Story of the Legionary Eagle on Rome’s Most Famous Statue with Dr. Bridget Buxton, University of Rhode Island
April - TBA
Would you like to receive a reminder email each month about the upcoming Symposia program?
Click here to let us know...
** All lectures are
sponsored by The Conservancy for the Parthenon and Centennial Park and
the Archaeological
Institute
of America.
Unless otherwise noted, lectures
begin at 7:00 p.m. Call 862-8400 ext. 324 for reservations. **
- November 12, 2011 – April 28, 2012
PURLIEU
SHARON CHARNEY & ANNE WILLIAMS
- Current - January 7, 2012
Hidden Gems: A History of Collecting at the Parthenon
- January 28 - May 19, 2012
WISH YOU WERE HERE: CULTURAL TOURISM AND THE PARTHENON
Pleasure in Collecting: American Art at the Parthenon
The James M. Cowan Collection
View
the collection...
View the Cowan Brochure...
In 1897, James M. Cowan from Aurora, Illinois, visited the Tennessee Centennial Exposition. He visited as the director of a group of girls who made up the Armour Drill Corps of Chicago. Cowan already had ties to Tennessee. At the age of thirteen, he had moved with his family to Tullahoma, Tennessee, and remained there until he was in his twenties when he moved to Cincinnati. He subsequently made his wealth in insurance, but his true passion was collecting art. As he neared the end of his life, Cowan had some seven hundred pieces in his collection. Aware that Nashville’s Parthenon was being reconstructed as a permanent structure, he decided to donate anonymously a portion of his collection to be housed there. Between 1927 and 1929, the works were shipped to Nashville, to be moved into the Parthenon upon completion of the reconstruction.
In fact, he purchased many pieces specifically with this destination in mind, eventually giving sixty-three pieces to Nashville. These works, all oils on canvas, dating 1765-1923, are housed permanently in the Parthenon and bare the name of its generous donor – the Cowan Collection.
A distinguishing characteristic of this collection is that all of the work was done by American artists. Fifty-seven artists are represented in the collection, most of which dates late 19th and early 20th centuries. Almost all of the artists represented were also members of the National Academy of Design, a prestigious artists’ league of the time. Within the collection, many connections occur among the artists as among their paintings.
A common theme found in most of the paintings is Impressionism. Impressionism was a school of painting introduced by the French in the first Impressionism Exhibition held in Paris in 1874. It was an attempt using pure color to imitate light. Many of the artists in this collection studied in Paris during their careers. Within the collection can be found many secondary artist alliances including the Hudson River School, the Luminists, the Symbolists, Barbizon School influences, and Nabis influences.
The primary concentration in the collection is fifty-one landscapes, including many plein-air paintings (done on location) and four seascapes which emphasize an undulating ocean and coast; a difficult and unusual subject matter. There are eight portraits in the collection, all of which the subject of the portrait is anonymous.
Generally, there is one work by each artist in the collection, so in looking you can learn something of the man who formed this collection by his choices. We see a man who was taken with the landscape in its more unrefined form, and had a diverse and unusual interest in figure paintings. This is a fine collection of American art and we are indeed fortunate to have it here in Nashville.
ORIGINS OF NASHVILLE’S PARTHENON: A new permanent exhibition exploring the history of Nashville’s beloved landmark
OPENED NOVEMBER 8
One of the first questions visitors and newcomers to Nashville have is “Why does Nashville have a replica of the ancient Parthenon?” This building, so beloved by the city, has a fascinating history. It’s hard to imagine Nashville without the Parthenon, but there were many years when its future was uncertain.
A new installation about the Parthenon explores its fascinating origin story, as the Fine Arts Building for the 1897 Tennessee Centennial Exposition, held in what is now Centennial Park to celebrate Tennessee’s hundredth year as a state. The exhibition delves into the Centennial Exposition (similar to a World’s Fair), exploring how Nashville presented itself to a national audience a generation after the Civil War.
After the Exposition ended, the Parthenon was in danger of being torn down. Nashvillians, enamored with the idea of their city’s nickname “The Athens of the South” made permanent in building form, clamored for it to remain. For over twenty years, the plaster and wood Parthenon stood in Centennial Park, until it was rebuilt out of concrete in the 1920s.
In 1931, renovation was complete, and the Parthenon has been open ever since, honoring the city’s legacy as a center of learning—much like ancient Athens—as well as the building’s origins as the Fine Arts Building, with its art galleries on the lower level.
The exhibition features many rare and seldom exhibited objects, artifacts, and souvenirs from the Centennial Exposition and the Parthenon over the past 115 years. Local lawyer, collector, historian, and ninth-generation Nashvillian David Ewing has loaned his entire collection of Exposition and Parthenon memorabilia, amassed over the past twenty years, to the Parthenon for this exhibition.
The exhibition will also feature props from the film Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, part of which was filmed in Centennial Park in 2009. In the movie, the main characters make a trip to Nashville to retrieve a pearl from inside Nashville’s Parthenon. Through a generous loan from the 20th Century Fox Film Corporation, several items from the movie, including a script and a pearl, will be on view for several months.
The new installation opened on November 8, 2011.