By Meghan E. Gattignolo Believe it or not, all the water on Earth today is the same water that was present on the planet’s surface more than 4 billion years ago. We drink the same water as our ancestors, as well as the creatures that roamed the planet before us. No resident of Earth could exist,…
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News
Meet Curator of Education: Stephanie Stafford
By Meghan E. Gattignolo During The Customs House Museum & Cultural Center’s 40 years of service to the Clarksville and Montgomery County community, a significant part of the museum’s presence has been an important educational focal point. When the former Curator of Education Sue Lewis retired in December 2022, after serving 33 years as an…
She Paints Landscapes: Why the Art of Jackie Langford Matters
By Meghan E. Gattignolo When you think of your favorite painting, is it a portrait of a pensive face? Or, do you see flowers floating on water, maybe a bridge, or some trees? Humans are hard-wired to love faces, but most art lovers know the worth of a good landscape. More than a simple recreation of…
Clarksville’s Road to 250: Celebrating an American Milestone
By Meghan E. Gattignolo After a long year of celebrating The Customs House Museum & Cultural Center’s 40th birthday, now it’s time to look ahead and get ready to celebrate another birthday! It’s hard to believe, but The United States of America is nearing a big milestone: 250 years! This is called a semiquincentennial – the…
5 Ways Indigenous Peoples Have Used Dunbar Cave Throughout History
By Meghan E. Gattignolo Dunbar Cave State Park and the Friends of Dunbar Cave will be hosting a First Day Hike and Membership Drive on January 1, 2025. Indigeous peoples have used the cave and the land around the cave for tens of thousands of years. Seeking Shelter and Safety A cave is a natural…
Lisa Gleim: Exploring Cherokee Traditions with Native Wildlife
By Meghan E. Gattignolo Accomplished artist Lisa Gleim earned space for her current exhibit at The Customs House Museum & Cultural Center three years ago. Gleim’s work won the vote for favorite artist during the American Women Artists Exhibition People Choice Award in 2021. Her solo exhibition Lisa Gleim: Keepers of the Animals is inspired by the…
Vintage Fashion: Purses From the Collection
By Meghan E. Gattignolo The Customs House Museum & Cultural Center’s mission is to collect, preserve, and interpret items from Clarksville and Montgomery County for future generations. Visitors can be sure just about every item saved in the museum’s collection or on display in the historical exhibits say something about the local area. Among other…
Thomas Dabney Mabry Creative Writing Contest Winner: Chrissy Hicks, Rising Local Author
By Meghan E. Gattignolo Clarksville, Tennessee, has its own prestigious award for creative writing. Thomas Dabney Mabry, Jr. was a published short story author from Clarksville who won the O. Henry Award in 1954 for his story “The Indian Feather”. He graduated from Harvard in 1925, and was an editor for Time magazine. Rightfully so,…
Ghosts of Austin Peay State University
By Meghan E. Gattignolo The city of Clarksville is 240 years old. A place with such deep history hides few corners where no one has ever tread. Particularly in downtown, you’ll be hard-pressed to walk a path not traveled by many people hundreds of years before. Every place in Clarksville has history, and maybe a secret or two. …
From the Collection: Greenwood Cemetery Receiving Vault Door
By Meghan E. Gattignolo Spooky season has fallen heavily upon us once more, and what’s spookier than spending a little time in a cemetery on a chilly fall day? I asked Curator of Collections Matthew Sarnelli to suggest an item from the collection to be the subject of this article. Matthew’s pick: A large heavy metal…
Meet Kim Raines: Lead Visitor Services Associate and Tour Guide Extraordinaire
By Meghan E. Gattignolo When asked what her favorite story is from the Customs House Museum & Cultural Center’s cemetery tours, Kim Raines doesn’t have to think about it too hard: “My favorite is probably Blanche Lewis and Augustus Tarwater, because I think it’s interesting that Clarksville has its own little tale of star-crossed lovers.” Like many…
Mason Rudolph: The Man and the Golf Course
By Meghan E. Gattignolo A new exhibit in the Museum’s Challenges and Champions Sports Gallery remembers legendary golf professional Mason Rudolph. Local golfers know the name well, both for the man himself, and the neighborhood golf course bearing his name. The exhibit is timely, as Clarksville is in the midst of debates over the future of the…
Life is Art: Transforming Clutter into Creativity
By Meghan E. Gattignolo The Customs House Museum & Cultural Center is happy to represent many artistic identities in Clarksville, as well as being a bastion for history and fantastic family times! To this end, celebrating creativity in all its beautiful forms is an important part of why we love our local museum. But when…
Don’t Let the Skies Go Silent: See the AFC’s Silent Skies Mural in Clarksville Today
By Meghan E. Gattignolo Here in Tennessee, we love our birds. Our state bird – the mockingbird – requires effort to love and often gets a bad reputation. Watching them, though, you have to admire their tenacity and clever ability to adapt to changes in their environment. However, today it’s easy to worry that our local bird…
Annual Museum Staff Art Show Arrives August 1!
By Meghan E. Gattignolo The legend that is The Customs House Museum & Cultural Center’s Annual Staff Art Exhibit is coming back! This exhibit is a unique addition to Clarksville’s local museum, a special chance to see what the creative staff that works behind the scenes can do. This exhibit has been going for more than…
Dunbar Cave: Clarksville’s Oldest Sacred Space Featured in the Museum’s Sundays @ 3
By Meghan E. Gattignolo When you do get a chance to walk through Dunbar Cave again, one thing the guides will ask is some variation of the question: What in your life do you consider sacred? A church is a sacred place to many, but some people find their grandmother’s kitchen equally so. A stadium…
The Tennessee Watercolor Society: Making Magic with Watermedia
By Meghan E. Gattignolo It’s hard to argue against the beauty of a watercolor painting. Flower petals appear so delicate, and the atmosphere often feels more whimsical than with other forms of painting. The lighter hues and fine edges lend a dream-like air to any scene. As beautiful as they are, watercolors are also one of…
Meet Matthew Sarnelli: Curator of Collections
By Meghan E. Gattignolo Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes at a museum? At the Customs House Museum & Cultural Center, three curators cultivate artwork, programming and ideas: a Curator of Exhibits, a Curator of Education and a Curator of Collections. All three curators interact with the collection in different ways. From…
Flying High Artists: Signature Pieces with a Statement
By Meghan E. Gattignolo Flying High has been one of Clarksville’s premier events for 40 years. The Museum’s main fundraising function, Flying High always proves to be an exciting party. Local celebrities, dinner, music and good vibes create the perfect atmosphere for an amazing night. Everyone remembers their first Flying High. A major part of…
“Like a Thunderbolt from the Skies”: The 101st Airborne Division’s Role in D-Day
By Meghan E. Gattignolo On June 6, 1944, some 156,000 troops from the UK, Canada, and the US landed on the shores of enemy-occupied France to bravely face Nazi Germany head on. The strategy was to take out Germany first, before focusing all military strength on Japan. First, though, Allied troops had to do the…
Celebrate 40 Years with a Week of Giving at the Customs House Museum & Cultural Center
By Meghan E. Gattignolo Hopefully, there comes a time in every museum’s life when it can reflect back on four decades of serving a community. In June, the Customs House Museum & Cultural Center will reach such a milestone. For 40 years, the Museum has had a hand in shaping the current Clarksville community. Long-time…
Celebrating 40 Years: The Vehicles of Memory Lane
By Meghan E. Gattignolo When I visited the Customs House Museum & Cultural Center as a kid, one of my favorite areas of the Museum to wander through was Memory Lane. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the Memory Lane gallery was the full-time home to most of the Museum’s collection of antique vehicles, as well…
Artivists Among Us: Artists Who Turn Trash into Treasure
By Meghan E. Gattignolo If you’ve ever felt a pang of guilt while throwing away a piece of trash, then you have something in common with Nashville artist Bill Henig. Henig may not call himself an “artivist,” but his art does send a message: one person’s trash is another’s treasure. The designated recycler of his…
Public Art in Clarksville: 4 Outstanding Statues
By Meghan E. Gattignolo Recently, we discussed some of the awesome murals that can be found in downtown Clarksville. Now it’s time to talk statues! City statues serve as monuments to the people who have shaped the cultural and historical landscape of a place. Clarksville has many people to salute who have brought our city to…
3 Captivating Reasons to Explore Dunbar Cave this Summer
By Meghan E. Gattignolo It’s almost that time of year again! Time to submerge yourself underground into the real hard-rock history of Clarksville, Tennessee with a tour through Dunbar Cave! Nowhere else in Montgomery County will give you a wider survey of the area’s history. From 10,000-year-old stoke marks to Civil War portraits and remnants of…
Clarksville Historic Homes: The Smith-Trahern Mansion
By Meghan E. Gattignolo Standing guard over the Cumberland River is a jewel of Clarksville historical architecture. As a child learning about Clarksville for the first time, I was told about the Smith-Trahern Mansion through the lens of a ghost story during a field trip. The image of a young woman waiting for her husband…
The Customs House Museum & Cultural Center: 40 Years of Collecting Art
By Meghan E. Gattignolo How big of a collection can you amass in 40 years? Would it even fit in your house? The Customs House Museum & Cultural Center has collected over 22,000 pieces of unique objects, artworks and historical artifacts over the past four decades since the Museum opened in 1984. From the 842 pieces of…
More Than Exhibits: Learn New Things with Fun Museum Programs
By Meghan E. Gattignolo When was the last time you visited your local museum? Maybe you brought your kids to Explorers Landing to play last summer, or maybe you haven’t visited since that school field trip in fifth grade. A lot has changed at your local Customs House Museum & Cultural Center, and it is probably…
Public Art in Clarksville: 4 Amazing Murals
By Meghan E. Gattignolo There is something about seeing colorful swathes of paint swirling on the side of a building that can excite people about the place where they live and work. Over the years, Nashville in particular has become awash with elaborate murals that people will drive miles to see. Clarksville, too, is now…
Clarksville: 1784
By Meghan E. Gattignolo It’s much easier to find remnants of the 19th century in Clarksville than the 18th. Most of the buildings on Franklin Street were built shortly after the Civil War. Plenty of newspaper articles from the last half of the 19th century can be found in archives online. Not to mention, Fort…