Nashville Museums and Galleries

While Cheekwood has plenty to appeal to all ages, it’s great for little ones. The estate hosts Tuesdays for Tots year-round, and activities change weekly. It's a wonderful opportunity for little ones to roll up their sleeves and experiment with glue, markers, glitter, and paint. During June and July, Cheekwood offers summer camp to explore the gardens and make their own little masterpieces.

The Frist has an entire gallery—the Martin ArtQuest Gallery—devoted to art activities where children can come by every day between 10 and 5:30 and on Sunday starting at 1 p.m. There are thirty decked-out stations set up for kids to experiment with different media including drawing, sculpting, printmaking, and even filmmaking with toy dinosaurs, plastic animals, and big toy spiders. For everyone else, there’s an encyclopedic lineup of rotating exhibitions from all over the world, as well as the recently renovated Martin ArtQuest Gallery, with interactive artmaking stations, some of which are inspired by the museum’s current exhibitions. Children (and adults) can experiment with different media including painting, printmaking, and animation. Bonus: Children under eighteen can visit for free.

This university gallery is very much worth a visit. Every two years, it exhibits photographer Alfred Stieglitz’s personal collection (Cézanne, Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso), as well as a permanent collection that spans three centuries. You’ll see works from masters like Alexander Calder, Diego Rivera, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Aaron Douglas.