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Cheekwood is a privately funded 55-acre estate on the western edge of Nashville, Tennessee that houses the Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art. Formerly the residence of Nashville's Cheek family, the 30,000-square foot Georgian-style mansion was opened as a museum in 1960.

The house that coffee built
Christopher Cheek founded a wholesale grocery business in Nashville in the 1880s. His son, Leslie Cheek, joined him as a partner, and by 1915 was president of the family-owned company. Leslie's wife, Mabel Wood, was a member of a prominent Clarksville family. Meanwhile, Joel Cheek, Leslie's cousin, had developed an acclaimed blend of coffee that was marketed through Nashville's finest hotel, the Maxwell House. Legend has it that Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed the blend "Good to the last drop," which is still a registered trademark for the product. Cheek's extended family, including Leslie and Mabel Cheek, were investors. In 1928, the Postum Cereals Company (now General Foods) purchased Maxwell House's parent company, Cheek-Neal Coffee, for more than $40 million.

With their income secured by the proceeds from the sale, Leslie Cheek bought 100 acres of what was then woodland in West Nashville for a country estate. He hired New York residential and landscape architect, Bryant Fleming, and gave him control over every detail - from landscaping to interior furnishings. The result was a limestone mansion and extensive formal gardens inspired by the grand English manors of the 18th century. Fleming's masterpiece, Cheekwood, was completed in 1932.

Leslie and Mabel Cheek and their daughter, Huldah Cheek Sharp, lived at Cheekwood until the 1950s when it was offered as a site for a botanical garden and art museum.

The development of the property was spearheaded by the Exchange Club of Nashville, the Horticultural Society of Middle Tennessee and many other civic groups. The Nashville Museum of Art donated its permanent collections and proceeds from the sale of its building to the effort. The new Cheekwood museum opened to the public in 1960.

Art Museum
Cheekwood’s art collection was founded in 1959 upon the holdings of the former Nashville Museum of Art. The core holdings include broad collections of American art; American and British decorative arts; contemporary art, especially outdoor sculpture acquired for the Woodland Sculpture Trail.

Cheekwood’s American art collection includes 600 paintings and 5,000 prints, drawings and photographs. The collection, assembled in the 1980s and early 1990’s through a multi-million dollar bequest, spans the history of American art. Its strength centers on The Eight. Other strengths include the world's largest collection of sculptures of William Edmondson, photographs by Louise Dahl-Wolfe, and a vast variety of post-Second World War prints. Recently, the Museum has pursued a consciously focused acquisition process, having added paintings by James Hamilton, William Bradford, and new contemporary sculpture for the Trail.

The core holdings of the decorative arts collection include the third-largest Worcester porcelain in the United States, and a 650-piece silver collection, spanning the 18th-20th centuries.

The Cheek Mansion is itself considered part of the collection. The renovation restored much of the original building, revealing authentic features (wood and marble floors that had been carpeted), and conserving historical architectural motifs, such as the illusionist murals that line the main corridor.

The Contemporary Art collection, housed in the galleries created out of the estate’s original garage and stables, is small but of high quality, including paintings by Larry Rivers, Andy Warhol, Robert Ryman, and Red Grooms. Additionally, seven small galleries were created in the old horse stable stalls to enable Cheekwood to display installation art.

The Carrell Woodland Sculpture Trail, a collection of fifteen sculptures by international artists, extends the contemporary art collection into nature, focusing on a kind of intimate, outdoor art not commonly found in American museums.

Botanical Garden
Extending across the grounds from the mansion, the Botanical Garden embraces the site’s 55 acres with a primary emphasis on education, display, research, and study. The collections include 500 species and cultivars of orchids; 300 cultivars of narcissus; 40 cultivars of camellia; one of the largest collections of trillium in the country (over 50 species); a rare collection of endangered species from Central America, exhibited in a simulated cloud forest; as well as a substantial collection of native Eastern U.S. plants. There are also significant collections of iris, roses, bromeliads, hostas, grasses, herbs, boxwood, and magnolias.

A Japanese Garden gives visitors the opportunity to study a specialized garden style and its native plants. The plants in the Howe Wildflower Garden, originally part of a private estate in historic Nashville, were transported to this site in 1968.

An extensive removal of invasive, exotic species and replanting with native plants has leveraged Cheekwood as a community leader in conservation and reclamation. The addition of the 8-acre Sculpture Trail has exposed native plant colonies of trout lilies, trillium, and an assortment of upper canopy shade trees. Over $150,000 has been invested in establishing native plant colonies including carpinus, viburnum, and rhododendron. These collections not only educate the public aesthetic, but also provide a valuable resource in preservation research. The Botanical Garden is the finest of its kind within a radius of 300 miles, making it an important horticultural resource for the entire region.

Other attractions
In addition to the Museum and the Botanical Garden, Cheekwood operates a gift shop, and a restaurant called the Pineapple Room which overlooks the greenery of the elegant west lawn. Cheekwood also administers the Owl’s Hill Nature Center, a wildlife sanctuary some eight miles away, which seeks to educate the public on all that lives, grows or hunts on its 160 acres.