Nashville for Free

The Nashville Symphony is a great community resource. Not all cities are as lucky as we are to have such amazing concerts from classical to international folk ballet to pop stars grace their symphony stages. The only problem is this: sometimes it’s just a little too expensive.

But luck would have it, the Nashville Symphony is experiencing a little bit of March Madness. They’ve discounted floor seats at Russian Masters (this week) and Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody to $35 and are offering 50% off all tickets to Tao: the Art of the Drum, Spanish Harlem Orchestra, Steven Wright (the comedian), and The Cleveland Orchestra.

The sale is for one week only, so you better get buying. Just make sure you use the promotional code MADNESS at check-out.

Thanks, Nashville Symphony!

-Emily

Ford must be in the spirit of giving (or selling cars, whatever). Today they are sponsoring a free day at the Country Music Hall of Fame. What does that mean? Exactly what you think it means. Yep, today you can visit the Country Music Hall of Fame for exactly zero dollars.

While there I highly recommend you check out, in addition to the exhibits, the two programs running today. There be a musical petting zoo from 11am-3pm and a songwriting session with Erin Enderlin and Jim “Moose” Brown at 11:30am. You know how I feel about musical petting zoos right? Hint – they’re awesome.

The songwriting session at 11:30am sounds pretty cool too. You might know Erin Enderlin from the Lee Ann Womack song “Last Call,” which Erin co-wrote. Jim “Moose” Brown has some even more famous songs under his belt, including “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere,” which is now stuck in my head and will remain there all day. You too? You’re welcome/I’m sorry.

The Country Music Hall of Fame is open today from 9am-5pm.

-Emily

Happy MLK Day everyone! Some of you probably have the day off, especially if you are a student, a federal worker, or work at a place that takes today off. That’s probably a lot of you. But what should you do? How can you keep yourself entertained and fill your mind with knowledge and beauty on your day off?

Easy, go to the Frist. It’s free today!

There are two pretty cool exhibits there right now. I’m a huge fan of the works in A Divine Light: Northern Renaissance Paintings from the Bob Jones University Museum & Gallery. It contains 28 great Baroque works and “designed as intimate encounter with the devotional art of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and explores the ways in which Northern Renaissance artists expressed the central mysteries of the Christian faith through setting, pose, gesture, and the objects of everyday life.”

Tracy Snelling’s “Woman on the Run” is the other exhibit at the Frist right now, and it’s pretty cool. It contains “sculptures of rundown buildings on the outskirts of town show a keen sensitivity to the psychological tensions and hidden narratives of ordinary life.”

The Frist Center will be open today from 10am-5:30pm. Enjoy.

-Emily

The first Thursday of every month is a great day for art lovers. It’s the night of Art After Hours and the Hillsboro Village Art Crawl, two of the best monthly art crawls in Nashville. Art After Hours takes place in and around The Arcade downtown where there are several fantastic galleries that sell different styles of art. There is also plenty of free wine and cheese and great people to talk to.

The Hillsboro Village Art Crawl focuses more on the neighborhood. There aren’t as many galleries, but so many of those businesses, including The Belcourt and Jackson’s, have rotating art collections by locals. There are also areas where vendors can set up and sell you things like paintings and beautiful aprons (great holiday gifts). I can’t find my press release for this month, but they also feature a specific local business every month, usually a restaurant.

Enjoy your art.

-Emily

Remember that woman who sued McDonald’s 15 years ago because she spilled hot coffee all over herself, burning her? People made a lot of fun of that case. It was used as an example of frivolous lawsuits in America, this country is going downhill, can’t believe she won, blah blah blah.

But why did that little lawsuit garner so much attention, especially if it was as frivolous as people claimed it was? And if the whole thing was so stupid, why did she win? How did she win?

The documentary Hot Coffee takes a look at the details and actual impact of the case. You’ll hear about how severe the woman’s burns actually were, how hot that coffee was (answer: VERY), how much of it was her fault, how that affected the payout, and more. It might sound like this would only be interesting to law students, but if nothing else it’s a great example of how we judge things before knowing all the details.

The McDonald’s case isn’t the only story outlined in this film – it’s one of four. Each story is about something messed up in the legal system. How much media can lead how we feel about a particular case, judicial elections, the dangers of liability caps, and mandatory binding arbitration clauses in contracts. Okay, it’s a little nerdy, but the reviews are pretty good so far.

Hot Coffee is showing tonight at 8:30pm at Lipscomb’s Ward Hall.

-Emily

It’s not a lecture, it’s a scientific discussion led by an expert. This month’s topic is The Elephant Sanctuary. Come learn about the unique lives of elephants and sit down with experts from The Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tenn. The sanctuary is home to 14 African and Asian elephants on its 2700+ acre site. They’ll discuss why Tennessee turns out to be a good location for elephants, why they have only female elephants, how elephants communicate, why they don’t allow public viewing and more. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to discover more about these magnificent animals.

The discussion will be led by Robert Atkinson, who joined the sanctuary in September 2010. He has also served as the Head of Wildlife for the United Kingdom’s Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and has a degree in zoology from London University and worked through his master’s and a doctorate at Oxford. The guy has worked with captive elephants since 1982 so he obviously knows his stuff and has a love for elephants.

It’ll take place at 7pm at the Adventure Science Center (not Fido).

-Emily

Nashville is becoming quite the destination spot for refugees and immigrants. I don’t know why, but it’s causing Nashville to become an even more diverse city. One of the major refugee groups come from Sudan, in Africa. Life there vs here is completely different, so it’s increasingly important for Nashvillians to take a closer look at our new residents.

That’s where the Scarritt-Bennett Center comes in. Tonight at 6pm they’re hosting a free event designed to open our eyes to Sudanese refugees. This event will feature excerpts from the documentary Next Door Neighbors: Sudanese so you can catch a glimpse of the daily life of this culture as refugees adjust to life in Nashville. Then you can  get an even better understanding as people from this culture offer their thoughts and answer questions in a follow-up panel discussion.

RSVPs are suggested. You can RSVP online, call 615.340.7557 or email aelliott@scarrittbennett.org.

-Emily

Remember, Remember, the 5th of November. Probably sounds familiar. That’s right y’all, it’s Guy Fawkes Night.

There are really two ways you know this. Either you’re really into Guy Fawkes in general or , if you’re like me, your friends were obsessed with V for Vendetta when it came out. I mean, it’s not hard to see why! Dystopia, treason, explosions, fire, Natalie Portman, this movie has everything.

But obviously we’re not in the UK, so it’s not like we actually celebrate Guy Fawkes Night. Well, actually, they do at Belmont University. They don’t shoot off fireworks, but every year The James Madison Society hosts a screening of V for Vendetta followed by a discussion of how the film relates to democracy today. The movie will be shown tonight at 6pm at Belmont’s Massey Business Center room 103. You can get to MBC pretty easily from Wedgewood if you’re not a student at Belmont. There should be plenty of guest parking right out front. If all else fails, ask a student (but ask nicely).

-Emily

A little-known fact about me is that I go nuts for art history, especially pre-17th century European stuff. You could then see why I’d be incredibly pumped about the new exhibit in the Frist – Northern Renaissance Art. Oh yeah, give me paintings by some old dudes with “van” in their names and I’m a happy camper.

Well, last night the Frist had a lecture about their Egyptian exhibit, and tonight they’re having a lecture on their other exhibit. It’s called “Picturing Faith and Telling Tales: Northern Renaissance Art” and it starts at 6:30pm sharp. You know, which is why that’s the title of this blog post. Anyway, let me just post the official event description:

Northern European art of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries was characterized by exquisite craftsmanship and didactic intent. Netherlandish and German masters mixed technical virtuosity with inventive pictorial strategies designed to stimulate memory. Paintings, such as those on view in A Divine Light: Northern Renaissance Paintings from the Bob Jones University Museum & Gallery, were practical and beautiful devotional aids used for spiritual betterment. Such paintings could be found in churches as well as private homes. This lecture will explore the revolutionary paintings of artists Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden, among others, that transformed European art.

I love events like this because it helps people who are more analytically-minded appreciate art. I mean, I could never really appreciate art, especially older stuff, until I learned how it was used. Van Eyck  and Hans Holbein were boring names that I had to know until I learned the history surrounding them. The amazing detail in their paintings (like the artist in the mirror in the picture shown) to anamorphic skulls, the more you know the more you see. So if you have a hard time “getting” art when you’re just strolling through a gallery you should seriously consider checking out a lecture. Like this one, perhaps.

-Emily

Haven’t you heard? The Frist has two really cool exhibits right now, and one of them involves ancient Egypt and mummies! As usual the Frist is hosting a few events to add to the experience of the exhibit, one of which is a lecture tonight at 6:30pm. It involves mummies and tomb robbery.

Sadly this isn’t about Indiana Jones, but it should still be pretty good. Here’s the gist: everyone knows that Egyptians went to extreme lengths to preserve bodies – it’s what mummification was all about. But why? Let’s see what the official event description has to say…

In this talk, Egyptologist Dr. Kara Cooney, star of Planet Green’s “Out of Egypt” and consultant to the TV series “Lost,” will suggest that this degree of body preservation became popular because of the increased risk of tomb robbery. Investments in mummification may have provided psychological security for elites who intended to perfectly preserve for eternity the flesh and bones of the deceased, even if all their burial goods were stolen.

In case you stopped reading at the word “Lost” because you got overly excited and had to lay down, Cooney is going to explain why she thinks Egyptians went nuts over preservation. And it’s not so they could walk around museums with the night guards either.

-Emily

P.S., is it just me, or does it seem like this would have been an appropriate event for Halloween or the week preceding Halloween?