The Civic Design Center and the Frist Art Museum have partnered to create Avenues to a Great City, on view in the Conte Community Arts Gallery from July 4 through December 14. Visitors are invited to consider the complex art of civic design through an exploration of the growth of Nashville as envisioned in the Civic Design Center’s 2005 publication The Plan of Nashville: Avenues to a Great City. This exhibition, which honors the twentieth anniversary of the publication, also invites visitors to engage in open dialogues about the ongoing factors influencing Nashville as an ever-changing city.

Avenues to a Great City looks back at Nashville’s history and considers the role of transportation on current developments. The Plan of Nashville, a key resource for this exhibition, is a fifty-year community-oriented master plan for which over eight hundred adults and youth were asked for ideas on how to improve quality of life and limit the negative effects of suburban sprawl. These ideas are presented in Avenues to a Great City along with recent public and private developments influenced by The Plan of Nashville, artistic interpretations of the city, and yet-to-be realized visions. Guests are invited to contribute their own ideas for what Nashville can become in the next thirty years.

Organized by the Frist Art Museum and the Civic Design Center and cocurated by Veronica Foster, Anne Henderson, and Mark Scala

Image: Metro Planning Department, 1963. Published in Christine Kreyling, The Plan of Nashville: Avenues to a Great City (Civic Design Center, 2005). Courtesy of the Civic Design Center