AROUND THE USA

New vistas open for leisure-time experiences in Nashville

The 1990s were a period of radical growth and change in the options for visitors and for Nashvillians in their off-duty hours.

The Parthenon at Centennial Park is a full-size replica of the crumbling structure in Greece and is a legacy of Tennessee's Centennial in 1896-97. It contains an awesome statue of Athena -- tallest indoor sculpture in the Western world -- and an art gallery in the basement that usually features American impressionists.

Long the home of urban parks, competitive college sports and several interesting galleries, the city added professional sports and major arts venues in the '90s. For the new millennium, Nashville opened the Frist Center for the Visual Arts and the new Country Music Hall of Fame. Meanwhile, the NFL Tennessee Titans and the NHL Nashville Predators were pumping adrenalin into the local sports scene.

Growth seems to favor the arts in the early part of the 21st Century. The Tennessee Performing Arts Center is busting at the seams and scheduled for a major renovation in 2002, and a new symphony hall seems imminent.

Martha Ingram, chairwoman of locally based Ingram Industries and one of the world's richest people, is the leading patron of the arts, and she's decided the Nashville Symphony needs a new venue. It currently shares the Performing Arts Center with everything from ballet to theater. With a $30 million challenge grant on the table and the symphony conductor snugly ensconced in the house behind her manse, a new hall seems to be on the program.

We have reports on:

• Visual Arts
• Performing Arts
• Museums & The Zoo
• Historic Sites
• Sports
• Parks
• Links

  Visual Arts

  The Frist Center for the Visual Arts, open in April 2001, promises to make art interesting for everyone -- high-brow or low-brow. Located in a magnificent Art Deco building downtown that was once Nashville's Main Post Office, the Frist is impressive. The Frist won't have its own collection but will instead be a venue for exhibitions from local and out-of-town collections.

  The Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Fine Arts Center is a former mansion that's been a civic institution for about four decades. Beautiful gardens and nice art galleries, both of which enjoyed huge expansions recently. We could hardly pick a favorite among the Japanese garden, the outdoor sculpture trail and the gardens of regional flowers.

  The Stieglitz Collection at Fisk University's Van Vechten Gallery is probably Nashville's least-heralded gem of the arts. Georgia O'Keeffe donated much of the modern art collection of her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, to Fisk. Works include pieces by Picasso, O'Keeffe, Cezanne, Rivera, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec and other notable artists.

  Performing Arts

  The Tennessee Performing Arts Center's three halls are typically booked nearly 365 nights per year with music such as the Nashville Symphony, plays by the Tennessee Repertory Theater, dance, touring Broadway companies and others and all manner of other performances.

  • A heavy-duty renovation in 2002 shouldn't affect the schedule.

  Amsouth Amphitheater (formerly Starwood Amphitheater) is the largest venue in the Nashville region and is often the site for big concerts. It has both covered seats and open seating on the lawn.

  • Events also occur at:
    • The Ryman Auditorium was originally built as a gospel tabernacle and later became the long-time home of the Grand Ole Opry. Virtually abandoned for nearly 20 years, it was renovated and enlarged in the 1990s to become an intimate concert venue. The Opry returns to the Ryman in for shows in the off-season (winter).
    • War Memorial Auditorium, an older auditorium near the Capitol, was also briefly a home for the Opry. It's still used today, particularly for smaller shows.
    • The new Gaylord Entertainment Center downtown, when not in use for ice hockey, is the city's largest indoor venues.
    • The Bluebird Cafe was the setting for the movie The Thing Called Love and is a dependable lineup of heralded and unheralded music acts with a particular emphasis on songwriters. Kathy Mattea and Garth Brooks played the Bluebird before they were famous; Vince Gill stills performs there frequently. Sweethearts of the Rodeo was discovered here.
    • Numerous clubs around town.The music culture of Nashville means a steady supply of off-duty stars and aspiring musicians of many styles to play at even the most obscure bars and restaurants. Consequently, you might catch Jimmy Buffet playing an impromptu set at The World's End or a future Randy Travis filling in during breaks at a club where he gets paid to wash dishes. Steve Winwood lives in Nashville.

  For up-to-date information about clubs, shows and performances, pick up the latest copy of the free Nashville Scene, which comes out every Wednesday.

  Museums

  The new Country Music Hall of Fame opened in May 2001 and promises to make country music interesting for everyone. We understand the museum is now more of a depiction of American culture, but it's still chock full of artificats from entertainers from Hank Williams to Willie Nelson to Boxcar Willie.

  The Tennessee State Museum tells the history of what is now Tennessee back to the earliest traces of civilization and is often the site of special exhibitions ranging from impressionistic art to Buffalo Bill Cody. It's one of the largest state museums in the nation.

  The Cumberland Science Museum and Sudekum Planetarium is near downtown and is about to undertake an expansion. Historically a children's museum, its fare is now broader and can captivate adults as well.

  The Nashville Zoo, as of summer 2000, would best be called a work in progress. Nashville is arriving late to the zoo party, having had no zoo until the 1980s when two unrelated efforts produced disparate facilities about 30 miles apart. In the 1990s, civic and zoo activists recognized the folly of such an arrangement . A merger was negotiated, and work began to consolidate the Nashville Zoo that was in Cheatham County and the Nashville Wildlife Park at Grassmere, which is conveniently south of Downtown Nashville. The work isn't scheduled for completion until 2003, and we aren't going to raise expectations until closer to that time.

The Hermitage, home of President Andrew Jackson, is on the east side of Nashville and is open for tours. It includes a museum. Major expansion, renovation and new exhibitions were completed in the 1990s.

Historic Homes

Nashville has preserved many historic homes, though not as many as we might like. The first two Tennessee Governor's Mansions were demolished, for example, as was the downtown home of President James K. Polk. Still standing and open for visits, though, are:

• The Hermitage, home of President Andrew Jackson.
• Tulip Grove Mansion, near The Hermitage, was built for one of Jackson's associates.
• Belle Meade Mansion, known as the Queen of Tennessee Plantations, has a museum and upscale restaurant.
• Belmont Mansion is the focal point of the Belmont University campus.
• Travellers Rest was the home of John Overton, a contemporary and ally of Andrew Jackson.

Sports

Until the last decade, sports in Nashville meant college athletics. In the 1990s, professional sports are blossoming. In particular, Nashville is crazy over the NFL Tennessee Titans.

The Nashville Sports Council supports all local sports and posts a comprehensive schedule on its website.

Professional Sports A couple of transition seasons (1997-98) were rocky, but in 1999, the Houston Oilers began playing as the Tennessee Titans in the new Adelphia Coliseum on the river downtown. By the time the Titans reached the Super Bowl in 2000, Middle Tennesseans were wild for pro football. The Nashville Predators have made NHL hockey a hit in Nashville. The Predators play at the Gaylord Entertainment Center downtown. The Nashville Sounds, AAA affiliates of the Pittsburgh Pirates, play baseball in the Pacific Coast League at Greer Stadium near downtown. The Sounds used to be fun, but now they're really bush league. The stadium is rinky-dink, an evening at the game is expensive and the team is deadbeat on paying its rent to the city.

College Sports A major social whirl centers around Vanderbilt University games, and partisans from the University of Tennessee added energy to the scene. Tennessee State University has a legendary athletic program. Vanderbilt University athletics are important to many, though Vandy's frequently not competitive with its SEC rivals. The Tennessee Volunteers have plenty of partisans in Nashville, though the University of Tennessee is in Knoxville. Tennessee State University was home to many world-class black athletes when segregation kept them out of other colleges. The Tigerbelles, track stars of the 1950s, helped crack racial barriers in athletics.

Parks

Nashville has one of the nations' most extensive urban park systems with 9,200 acres of public spaces. The Warner Parks, at 2,600 acres, are the largest in the system. Edwin Warner Park and Percy Warner Park are contiguous to each other in southwest Nashville and include hiking and driving trails and a new Nature Center.

The Iroquois Steeplechase is in Percy Warner Park.

Nashville's Metro Parks & Recreation Department provides all sorts of recreation opportunities, including horseback riding, golf, team sports, water sports, hiking and camping. Greenways are completed or under construction in several urban and suburban areas.

In addition to the city parks, Radnor Lake State Natural Area is more than a thousand acres of unspoiled beauty surrounding an 80-acre lake a few miles south of downtown.

Links

The Middle Tennessee Outdoor Recreation web site is a comprehensive list of parks and other outdoor opportunities.