Nashville's Parthenon

Nashville has a Parthenon and, even though it was undergoing renovation, it was open to the public

Nashville used to style itself as "the Athens of the South." In its capacity as a New World Athens, it built itself a Parthenon. And, unlike the one in the Old World Athens, its Parthenon remains standing intact.

(The posting of the second half of yesterday's Nashville tourism was delayed due to the fact that, after 10 years of vacation blogging, I finally used up the 15GB of free photo storage from Google. I had to buy more. Actually, I have to rent more. You buy nothing nowadays when it comes to computer usage. Everything in a rental.)

Unlike just about all of downtown Nashville, and even though the land surrounding it was all torn up, Nashville's Parthenon was open for business.

No need to rest on the dragon/sea serpent shaped bench out front, which I don't believe they have in the original Parthenon in Athens. I could be wrong. Nashville's Parthenon is the only Parthenon which thus far I have visited. I have no plans to rectify that situation as Greece is so far down the list of places I want to visit, it would take the Hubble Telescope to see it. (It is, however, ahead of Ireland. Just for the record.)

The Parthenon was first built for the 1897 Tennessee Centennial and International Exhibition. I am referring to the Nashville Parthenon and not the Athens, Greece, Parthenon. I don't know why they built the Athens, Greece, one, but I know it was not to celebrate the centennial of Tennessee's admission to the Union.

Weirdly enough, the 1897 Tennessee Centennial and International Exhibition was one year after the actual Tennessee centennial. I think it had something to do with not getting the money raised in time. Anyway, the exhibition (the functional equivalent of a world's fair) was a huge success. Many of the buildings, such as the Parthenon, were designed to look like major structures from Old Europe. They had a mock Rialto Bridge just like in Venice, for example. And the structure built by the City of Memphis (named for a city in Egypt) and Shelby County was, as you can see from this photograph inside the Parthenon, was a replica of the Great Pyramid of Cheops:

The Pyramid is long gone, but the Parthenon still stands. Actually, all of the buildings were built to be temporary. Even the Parthenon. This is not the original Parthenon. And by that I mean this is not the original Nashville Parthenon. The Nashville Parthenon was built to be the Fine Arts Building for the exhibition. It was so popular that, after the fair, funds were raised to built a permanent Parthenon out of concrete.

It is now an art museum. The two major "art" exhibits are, first, the James M. Cowan collection of paintings on permanent display. Cowan was a major art collector in the early years of the previous century and he collected the works of major American artists. My favorite was this one:

"The Young Musician" by John George Brown. It was painted in 1878 and purchased by Cowan in 1901. The Cowan collection has far more landscapes than portraits, but I thought this one was exceptional, because (although you can't see it in this picture) "The Young Musician" in the painting has very expressive, very human, eyes.

The other bit of fine art is a replica of a giant statue:

Here she is. Athena Parthenos. The original also inhabited a Parthenon, the one in Athens, Greece. (I feel the need to keep saying "Athens, Greece," as if you will think that the original Parthenon was in Athens, Georgia, or Athens, Ohio. It's not. It's in Greece. Well, at least what's left of it is.)

For some reason, I thought that Athena Parthenos looked like Judy Tenuta

The original Athena Parthenos was sculpted of gold and ivory in the mid 400's B.C. She's Gone. I'd pay the devil to replace her. However, in 1990, a New World Athena Parthenos was erected in the New World Parthenon.

A view of her shield:

There also is a collection of statuary shards, matching what's left of these various statues in the original Old World Parthenon.

Of all the statuary in the Old World Parthenon, only the statue of Dionysus has kept his head when all those about him lost theirs:

Apparently that's a serious comment. Apparently he's the only one with a head in the original Parthenon.

The Parthenon is found in Centennial Park, west of downtown Nashville, where the original 1897 exhibition was held. I believe that Lake Watauga here also was built for the 1897 exhibition:

I could be wrong. Don't quote me.

Duck butts:

Duck derriere in Lake Watauga. After all that, it was time to enjoy something authentically Nashville. Nashville Hot Chicken, at the Party Fowl:

The Nashville Hot Chicken was good. It was an extra crispy fried chicken with cayenne in the batter. And lard, which made it a little greasy, but it was not "greasy tasting," if that makes sense. At least the Parthenon and the Party Fowl were open for business.