Avenues to a Great City
July 4–December 14, 2025

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (June 12, 2025)—The Civic Design Center and Frist Art Museum present Avenues to a Great City, an exhibition that honors the twentieth anniversary of the Civic Design Center’s landmark publication The Plan of Nashville: Avenues to a Great City and examines the history of Nashville’s built environment, including transit, public art, and neighborhood infrastructure. The exhibition will be on view in the Frist’s always-free Conte Community Arts Gallery from July 4 through December 14, 2025.
The Plan of Nashville is a fifty-year community-oriented master plan developed from the feedback of more than eight hundred adults and youth on how to limit the negative effects of suburban sprawl and improve the quality of Nashvillians’ lives. These ideas are presented in this new exhibition along with recent public and private developments influenced by The Plan of Nashville, artistic interpretations of the city, and yet-to-be-realized visions.
“Avenues to a Great City considers the growth of Nashville in relation to the 2005 Plan of Nashville,” says Frist Art Museum Director of Education and Engagement Anne Henderson. Photographs, maps, and drawings reflecting participants’ ideas are presented alongside artwork and images depicting Nashville’s history, recent developments, city plans, and initiatives that address many long-term goals of The Plan. “This exhibition will also offer opportunities for guests to engage in open dialogues about the ongoing factors influencing Nashville as an ever-changing city and contribute their own ideas for what we can become over the next thirty years,” Henderson notes.
Civic Design Center Communications and Advocacy Manager Veronica Foster explains that The Plan of Nashville stemmed from the goal of the organization’s founding in 2001: the creation of a long-term vision for the built environment principles that Metro departments, designers, and developers could look to for guidance. “The Plan was meant to be idealistic, visionary, not necessarily something that you would imagine happening or completed in your own lifetime, but something for which we could collectively advocate,” notes Foster. “This exhibition serves as a check-in and asks, ‘How far has the city come in achieving The Plan’s goals? How has the city evolved separately from The Plan, and how can it also continue to influence us as our city grows and evolves?’”

Organized thematically into ten sections, the exhibition begins with a look at Nashville’s early infrastructure in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Subsequent sections explore the city’s history in relation to transportation and highway construction, neighborhood development, public art, and its evolving relationship with the Cumberland River.
A contemporary video work by the artist John Warren, Future Tense (2017), lingers on construction cranes around Nashville, “rendering them as strange, captive figures suspended in the ambivalent currents of capitalism,” in Warren’s words. The exhibition also includes photographs by Conner Getchell, DeShawn Lewis, and Michael Ray Nott and paintings and mixed media works by Jennifer Carland, Jessica Eichman, and Trisha Peña.
In showing how The Plan of Nashville foretold contemporary development in Nashville, Foster cites it as a major influence in the Imagine East Bank Plan that was completed by Metro Planning in 2022: “There are so many players across sectors that are tasked with making the visions from the Imagine East Bank Plan come to fruition. The Civic Design Center will always be the unifying force that reminds the community why we are calling for a change in the first place—to improve the quality of life for all. We can’t lose sight of that as plans become reality.”
At a visitor response section, guests can share their ideas for points of interest on a map of Nashville. During the run of the exhibition, public programming will also invite visitors to dig deeper into The Plan of Nashville and their perspectives on the city.
About the Civic Design Center
Founded in 2001, the Civic Design Center advocates for civic design visions and actionable change in communities to improve quality of life for all. The work began with a large-scale community engagement project that culminated in a comprehensive vision for the city called The Plan of Nashville (2005). Guided by that vision, the Design Center’s projects and programs help forge cross-sector connections and shape places for all. TURBO uses our home city as a playground to test actionable solutions using temporary, experimental methods. The Design Center’s youth programs teach design thinking in the classroom and give youth the power to lead change outside the classroom. Regular events serve as opportunities for both community education and forums for discussion across many urban planning and design issues—from parks and open spaces to transportation and housing. For more information on Civic Design Center and its programs, please visit www.civicdesigncenter.org.
Program
Opening Panel: Avenues to a Great City
Presented by Christine Kreyling, Seab A. Tuck, and Joni Williams, moderated by Gary Gaston
Thursday, July 10, 6:30–7:30 p.m.
Auditorium
Free; first come-first seated
This Opening Panel for Avenues to a Great City is part of an event series looking to the past, present, and future to explore the influence of The Plan of Nashville, twenty years after its publication. Join the author of The Plan and other key participants as they discuss the project’s development, publication, and subsequent impact, making the case that it is only by reflecting on the past context of planning in our city that we can continue to vision for the future.
Exhibition Credit
Organized by the Frist Art Museum and the Civic Design Center and cocurated by Veronica Foster, Anne Henderson, and Mark Scala with Chelsea Barranger, intern
Supporter Acknowledgment
Presenting sponsor: HCA Healthcare/TriStar Health
Supported in part by Hastings and the Ryman Hospitality Properties Foundation
With additional support from our Founders’ Circle
The Frist Art Museum is supported in part by The Frist Foundation, the Tennessee Arts Commission, Metro Arts, andthe National Endowment for the Arts.
Connect with us @FristArtMuseum #TheFrist
FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Buddy Kite: 615.744.3351, bkite@FristArtMuseum.org
Ellen Jones Pryor: 615.243.1311, epryor@FristArtMuseum.org