Emporium Building

After visiting the UT Downtown Gallery, Mike Berry showed us the Emporium Building next door. It holds an emporium worth of artists and organizations. After visiting our host's studio, I wandered the balcony upstairs, looking at what some local artists are creating today.

UT Downtown Gallery

The Downtown Gallery is small but free. Wednesday-Friday from 11AM to 6PM and Saturday from 10AM to 3PM. They are also open on First Fridays. Mike Berry, the manager, was nice and gracious enough to buy us snacks. The space is airy and open. Due to the size, there was only one exhibit on display, Dali Illustrates Dante’s Divine Comedy.

The exhibit was hung without too much fanfare, just a lovely display of the art. The following are a few of my favorites.

Bays Mountain

While spending the day picnicking and hanging out with friends on Sunday in the camp/picnic grounds next door, a few friends and I decided to head up to Bays Mountain. While they do have a Planetarium, we only had time to visit the Nature Habitat. Something that made us all chuckle was that there were white-tailed deer in a fenced-in area of the habitat, there was also one wild one just hanging out in the parking lot.

The raccoons and wolves were pretty still on the hot day, but still visible. The raptors were out in their cages and were lovely to look at. It's $4 a car to get in the park and prices range for $2-$4 for special activities like Planetarium Theater Astronomy Shows, Nature Programs and Barge Rides. We saw part of a nature show going on and a staff member had out a black vulture.

Blount Mansion

The Blount Mansion is a National Historic Landmark as the birthplace of Tennessee. At $7 an adult, they are one of the pricier museums in Knoxville. You do get a guided tour of the house and environs. The website is ugly and out of date, so you would need to call about hours.

William Blount is considered instrumental in the founding of Tennessee and the blossoming of Knoxville. The house is as original as they can get it for various time periods, though little of the objects in the house are original. Parts of the house could likely use an update, but parts of it was lovely, like the formal parlour.

The visitor center was under-utilized, an eyesore and a money waster with all the space that has to be climate controlled when it's not being used. It is a fine example of the mistakes a board can make in the management of any museum.

Mabry Hazen House

A historic house, $5 a person. Check the website for dates and times they are open, they are closed some random days. The website is nice and simple, but I think appropriate for the Mabry Hazen House.

The grounds look a bit in disarray, however, the staff consists of one person and we took up part of week when the house is normally closed. Inside, it smells the slightest bit musty, but many older homes do. While the rooms were blocked off, being able to move into the room with the extended doorway made it easier to look about.

I enjoyed the fact that everything in the house was actually part of the family's stuff. It wasn't random items just put together so that the house looked a particular way, it was the actual stuff they used. The back of first floor had displays of newspaper articles, letters and photos of the family, but it had obviously aged and looked dated. Of the volunteer projects we were told about that the various houses and museums needed done, this one looked like it would be the most interesting.

Beck Cultural Center

The Beck Cultural Exchange Center seemed to be easily one of the busiest places we visited. It's main focus seemed to be being a place the community could use, not only as a museum and library, but also a focus for community activity. The staff was incredibly warm and welcoming.

The room that seemed the most traditionally 'museum' was the upstairs room dedicated to William Hastie. Though it was still a work in progress, it was shaping up to be a space most museums would be proud of. The rest of the collections besides the library seem to hark back what many history museums started as, small collections in house. This 'house' just happens to be bigger.

I think what they are doing with the Beck Center, making it more part of the community, being in the community rather than just located there, is something that other small museums might want to look at as a model where to go if funding for museums continues to be so hard to get.

Their website is nice, however, it is obvious that it likely was built with a template.

Wandering Downtown

As a relative newcomer to Knoxville, I had no idea there was so much public art on the streets in downtown. Going by trolley to visit museums with the class encouraged me to wander around and these are just a few of the pictures I shot. Some of it is actual sculpture and some of it is just the details on buildings, but downtown is rather lovely.
























The jazz murals were done by local school children. This large rusted piece I didn't like, it doesn't seem to be worth what was paid for it, just a slab of metal.

















A few of the pieces in Krutch Park, like the orange-yellow one, needed to have the trees around them cut back. I really liked the rusted piece and how it seemed to sweep to reflect the shapes around it.

East TN History Center

The East Tennessee History Center is located on Gay Street in downtown Knoxville. Museum admission is free on Sundays, where they are open from 1-5, the rest of the week costs $5 for adults and is open from 9-4 weekdays and 10-4 on Saturdays. The complex includes Museum of East Tennessee History, East Tennessee Historical Society, Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection and Knox County Archives. It is a vibrant bustling place and a good start for people wanting to know more about Eastern Tennessee.

The Museum of East Tennessee History occupies the majority of the ground floor. For a staff of five, this is an incredibly well put together museum. The first area you come to in the museum is a streetscape showing what life would have been like in a generic town around turn of the century 1900. The trolley car is a permanent fixture in the museum. That and the drug store are lovely to look at, but perhaps need to be a bit more interactive.

The cornerstone exhibit and pride of the museum is Voices of the Land. While it is very visually grabbing, the sheer amount of text took away from some of what the artifacts would say on their own. The whole exhibit could lose half the text it has and still tell the story that it wants to present. However, they did do a good thorough job of using people's personal experiences and words to tell the story of the history of the region. There was enough in this one exhibit to take up almost an entire day if you wished to take your time reading all the text.

Vanishing Appalachia is the temporary exhibit in the museum and unfortunately, I did not get to spend enough time wandering through it to say much. The few photographs I had a chance to really look at were visually striking and I hope to return to spend more time, both in the Voices and the photographs fall semester.

McClung

The McClung Museum is located on the University of Tennessee Knoxville campus. It is open 9 to 5, Monday through Saturday and 1 to 5 on Sundays. Admission is free. Their website is excellent and you can view the permanent exhibits online if you can't make it to this museum. The statue leading up to the museum was interesting, but on the day I went alone, the landscaping could use some tending to.



There is a wide variety of exhibits at the McClung. Archaeology & the Native Peoples of Tennessee is one of my favorite museum exhibits. The exhibit is set up so you can casually look through it or spend hours in it. There is quite a bit of information contained in the exhibit without it being overwhelming to the casual museum goer. The entire room is designed to make you look around, with displays underfoot and grand paintings adorning the walls.

The exhibit is designed to lead you around the outside of the room, but many people miss the interactive displays in the middle. As someone who is considering teaching anthropology, I especially enjoyed the display where you guess what something is from a piece of, making people think about the way field archeologists have to think about the items they find.

The small theater in the back was a good size for the space and the video was okay. An exceptional piece in the exhibit was the canoe and the designer of the space presented it in a way that didn't overwhelm but still showed the entire thing. The Duck River Cache is simply amazing and such an important find it could almost be it's own exhibit.
























































The Egyptian exhibit is nice and shows a wide variety of artifacts, both actual and copies. The Hypostyle Hall model is very striking and draws the eye. Copies help fill out the collection, however, a notice on why there are models and copies rather than originals might help with public perception on the exhibit. One of my favorite items in the collection was a small aqua-colored hippo. I also enjoyed the palettes used for crushing cosmetics.














































On temporary display was my least favorite exhibit in the museum, the one on shells. I thought using the same bland blue for the backing of each case with the same lighting was very bland, though I can understand that money can be a problem with mounting temporary displays in an interesting manner. The Freshwater Mussel exhibit had some of the same problems.

Downstairs, in addition to the mussel display, there is the Battle for Fort Sanders display, which is a little dated, but ties in with the local area excellently. The Human Origins exhibit is good, though as an anthropology major, I've had to look at it multiple times, so it's lost some of the the luster. I enjoy the mural on the ceiling every time I'm there.

All in all, the McClung is definitely worth the visit even if you don't live on campus. Parking in Circle Park is free for 45 minutes, which is plenty of time for a casual stroll though the entire museum or a more detailed-oriented visit to one of the individual exhibits.

Tidbits of Campus

On the UT campus, there are several works of art. The sculpture in the middle of the walk is striking and though it might not be a popular opinion, I like it. The photos are just a few snapshots I took as I wandered from the UC to class one day. The sustainable project in front of McClung is worth keeping an eye on when a free moment presents itself.