NASHVILLE, TENN.- Cheekwood Estate & Gardens continues to grow its contemporary outdoor sculpture collection with the acquisition of Untitled (4x8) from internationally recognized, Brooklyn-based artist Virginia Overton. Overton was born in Nashville in 1971 and maintains strong connections to Middle Tennessee, where her family has owned a farm for more than a century. Untitled (4x8) has been exhibited around the world with two earlier versions in European and American private collections. The third version of the series has been fabricated specifically for Cheekwood and will be permanently installed on The Ann & Monroe Carrell Jr. Family Sculpture Trail, the second addition since the trail’s major renovation and reopening in 2020. Untitled (4x8) will debut on Oct. 8 in conjunction with the Frist Art Museum’s exhibition Virginia Overton: Saved, which will be on view Oct. 7 through Dec. 31, 2022.

“We are excited to soon unveil our newest sculpture,” says Cheekwood Vice President of Museum Affairs James W. Tottis. “The acquisition is a significant addition to our permanent collection as it enables us to celebrate an internationally known artist with roots in Tennessee and continue the tradition of bringing world-class contemporary sculpture to Nashville.”

Overton's work includes photography, sculpture and installation, exploring the profound potential of everyday materials. She transforms organic elements, as well as pickup trucks, rusty pipes and other industrial detritus, into sculptures that respond to and shape their surrounding environments. Untitled (4x8) is a marked example of Overton’s oeuvre. It’s made of an oversized steel frame filled with dozens of repurposed metal pipes of different sizes. When viewed head-on, the sculpture creates the effect of looking through a kaleidoscope, fragmenting one’s view while also highlighting the surrounding landscape in changing seasons.

Overton was the first woman artist to have a solo exhibition at the Socrates Sculpture Park in New York and her work has been exhibited widely at major national and international institutions, including Kunsthalle Bern, Frist Art Museum, Institute of Contemporary Art in Miami, Storm King Art Center, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the new terminal at LaGuardia airport in New York. She has also been included in group exhibitions at the Venice Biennale, Frieze Sculpture, London’s Hayward Gallery and Art OMI. As a top actively collecting art museum in Tennessee with a permanent collection of more than 7,000 works, Cheekwood now joins the ranks of many important private and public collections to which Overton’s art belongs, including the Museum of Modern Art, the San Antonio Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.