Seth Parker presents, fresh off the press
Tennessee State Museum
The photo session
Meyvaert supplied 35 bespoke display cases for the Civil War and Reconstruction gallery — recessed cases, drawer cases, and three freestanding, full-height curved cases in faceted glass, with projection surfaces above them. Faceted glass, in a gallery full of lights and secondary displays: every pane throws back something. I wrote at the time that the toughest thing about all that glass is all that glass, and I haven’t improved on that sentence since. The job was making the glass disappear.
The Credits
from the recordThe Honors
what the jury sawThe awards go to the architects, designers, and builders. My images simply showed the architecture in its best light.
- AIA Middle Tennessee
- Merit Award, 2021
- ULI Nashville
- Excellence in Development, 2020
- ASHRAE Technology Award
- First Place, 2020
- IALD Award of Excellence, 2020
Liner Notes
the record, in fullAll That Glass
The Building
HGA of Minneapolis was design architect — and the mechanical engineer, and the lighting designer, which is why the museum’s lighting award went home with HGA rather than an outside consultant. EOA Architects of Nashville was architect of record; Sheila Dial Barton and Nancy Blankfard led the two teams. Turner built it: 141,000 square feet, two stories, opened October 4, 2018, at Rosa Parks and Jefferson on the Bicentennial Mall.
Two things to point a camera at. First, the bronze — Muntz bronze at the entrance canopy, and forty balanced doors in a custom patina, metal that reads warm and shifts with the hour. Second, the daylight runs backwards on purpose. The galleries stay dim to protect the collection, so the skylights over the Grand Hall and the main stair carry all the light the artifacts can’t have. Bright core, dark rooms. The building hands you its own contrast structure; you’d be foolish not to take it.
What the Museum Won
ULI Nashville gave it the 2020 Excellence in Development award for a large public-sector project. ASHRAE gave it a first-place Technology Award. The IALD gave it an Award of Excellence — one of seven granted worldwide that year. AIA Middle Tennessee added a Merit Award in 2021. The awards belong to the building, to HGA, and to EOA.
The Guitar
The museum was closed to the public the Monday I photographed it, which is the quietest a 141,000-square-foot building ever gets. And from above, the permanent exhibits — six of them, Natural History through Tennessee Transforms, strung along the Tennessee Time Tunnel — trace what I’ve always taken for the shape of a guitar. No architect has ever confirmed that for me. I’ve decided not to ask.
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