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…
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News
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…
Through the Lens of Art: How Sharing Art Helps Veterans
By Meghan E. Gattignolo For one month only, experience the stories and emotional journeys of local military veterans through their artwork on display at the Customs House Museum & Cultural Center. The Montgomery County Veterans Coalition, in partnership with the Tennessee Department of Veterans Services, has organized a thought-provoking exhibit to help bring veterans’ stories…
Garden with Native Plants in Clarksville this Spring
By Meghan E. Gattignolo Plants do a lot more for us than look pretty – a fact that’s easy to forget in our busy lives. Besides the obvious life-supporting oxygen they give off, plants provide food for both people and wildlife. Native plants are even better. They connect us with a place. Plants tell a story…
Clarksville: 1884
By Meghan E. Gattignolo Clarksville turned 100 years old in 1884. No one alive remembered the founding of the town, and the city was growing. Several immigrants had recently moved in to do business downtown, and as a bustling tobacco town, Clarksville had become a sophisticated hub of commerce. Clarksville had a train station, a few…
14 Ways to Celebrate Valentine’s Day 2024 in Clarksville
By Meghan E. Gattignolo Valentine’s Day is this upcoming Wednesday, and the weather forecast is cool and partly cloudy. Regardless of what the weather does – which isn’t super predictable around here anyway – you can still have an amazing Valentine’s Day this year. No matter how you like to celebrate, you’ll find something enjoyable from…
The Bennett Prize Returns to the Customs House Museum
By Meghan E. Gattignolo As a strong supporter of women artists, the Customs House Museum & Cultural Center has hosted the Bennett Prize exhibit since its first award in 2019. Women artists sometimes find it difficult to make an impression on the art world. Especially in the world of figurative art, men are often given…
How Google Data Center Community Grants Work
By Meghan E. Gattignolo When the Montgomery County Google Data Center opened in 2019, it opened up new opportunities for Clarksville. The boost in job availability was a huge benefit, as well as the inclusion of the kind of tech jobs most Clarksville residents previously had to drive to Nashville for. Another added value for…
Clarksville: 1984
Amid an exciting world awash in Day-Glo clothes, new technology, and iconic pop songs, the city of Clarksville turned 200 years old. When John Montgomery built his fort near a spring on a hill in 1784, there’s no way he could have pictured how sprawling Clarksville would become. In 1984, Clarksville citizens could think of…
Brenda Stein: Carving Treasures and Branching Out
By Meghan E. Gattignolo Nashville resident and artist Brenda Stein doesn’t know what she’d do without her trusty chainsaw. Finding fallen wood in the forest or on the side of the road is a treat for her. Raw wood is her blank canvas. The chainsaw makes it possible for her to cut found wood into…
3 Times the Museum’s 1898 Building Witnessed Clarksville History
By Meghan E. Gattignolo As we observed last month, the oldest section of the Customs House Museum & Cultural Center is now 125 years old. That’s a lot of history to observe. When the building opened to the public as a post office in November 1898, Queen Victoria was still on the throne in Britain,…
The 1898 Building: 125 Years of Changing Identities
By Meghan E. Gattignolo “This building is unusually flamboyant in style for its size. Its highly pitched roof with large eagles on the four corners, its steep gabled windows, and its elaborate terra-cotta ornamentation combine to give importance to what is a relatively small building. Designed as a post office for the city of Clarksville,…
Aristides and LeQuire: Kindred Artists
By Meghan E. Gattignolo Once again, the extraordinary Juliette Aristides and the irreplaceable Alan LeQuire are gracing the galleries of the Customs House Museum & Cultural Center with the presence of their artistic talents. Aristides paints and draws in the classical realist tradition, and LeQuire is one of Tennessee’s most well-known sculptors. Both have been featured…
Noel Night 2023 Gift Guide
By Meghan E. Gattignolo It’s finally upon us! The holidays are creeping up and Noel Night 2023 is just around the corner! You love Art Walk throughout the rest of the year, but have you experienced December’s Art Walk and Noel Night at the Customs House Museum & Cultural Center? Every year during December’s Downtown Art…
Meet Laura Cagaoan, Visitor Services Manager
By Meghan E. Gattignolo Laura Cagaoan is a lifetime resident of Clarksville, TN. She holds a master’s degree in education and is a hardworking mother of three. Laura is a quick study and is great at learning new skills in order to create new opportunities for herself and those around her. If Laura had to pick…