New Connections appear every Wednesday. Sign up for a reminder.
Video producer Christopher Noey talks about his childhood state of Tennessee and the unusual places it pops up in the Museum.
My name is Chris Noey, and I'm a video producer at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and before I moved to New York, I actually
grew up in Tennessee, in East Tennessee, close to Knoxville, and there a lot of reminders
of my childhood state when I go around the museum.
The first, most striking thing about Tennessee is its natural beauty. When I say I'm from Tennessee people always say, "Oh I drove through Tennessee. It was very beautiful."
They don't usually say much else after that. They don't say it's interesting or cosmopolitan or exciting, but they always say it's beautiful. And I have to say, walking around the museum one day I saw
this painting that just said to me "Tennessee." And when I went to look at the label, in fact it was exactly like something I would have seen when I was a kid.
I can't say I ever saw anything like this when I was growing up. I guess it had all gone off to the museums a long time ago, but sometimes when you walked by
the riverbanks and flat areas where people could have lived, if you were lucky you might find an arrowhead or some trace of the Native Americans that lived there in earlier centuries.
Tennessee was a place that had a lot of larger-than-life characters. Benjamin Franklin, this great sculpture by Houdon, reminds me that Tennessee at one point was called the State of Franklin. In the 1780s, the locals decided to create a new state. They came up with Franklin, in part hoping to curry favor with America's great statesman. Apparently
Benjamin Franklin would have nothing to do with them and the whole thing fell apart, and it was a few years later, in 1796, when Tennessee entered the union as the sort of western-most state, and it really was the west of the United States for a while.
So when Andrew Jackson, who was our first Tennessee president, was elected, he was elected as the western president at that point. He was not good on slavery and he wasn't good on Native Americans, but none of that's evident when you look at this
depiction of him by Hiram Powers of marble where he looks like some great Roman statesman. In my childhood I never imagined anybody so august.
In my own childhood growing up, born in the '50s and growing up in the '60s in East Tennessee, there were still
a lot of remnants of the extraordinary poverty of the South in general after the Civil War that was highlighted by photographers in the '30s and the '40s.
People like Walker Evans for instance, but many others as well. And I remember we would go to the big city of Knoxville to go shopping and you would see
preachers on the street, and you would see these remarkable, eccentric store windows. You'd see these wonderful
signs sometimes on businesses that were so disconnected from the mass culture of the rest of the United States. But things were changing, and that was due in very large part to these
great public works projects like the Tennessee Valley Authority, a great New Deal project, which built these extraordinary dams and electrical plants all over the state of Tennessee, where flooding was such a problem.
It was only after I started working at The Metropolitan Museum of Art that I realized that the Memphis, Egypt that produced these great works of art was also the inspiration for the name of Memphis, Tennessee.
And then Memphis was also the inspiration for this very kooky furniture design by Ettore Sottsass, his "Memphis" series.
He liked the ambivalence of the kind of connection between the ancient Egypt of the pharaohs and the Memphis, Tennessee of Elvis Presley fame.
I think about Tennessee a lot as I go through the museum, but I think the thing that reminds me most of it is when I look down and see the pink Tennessee marble that we use in the floors of much of The Metropolitan
Museum of Art. In the East Coast it's a real prestige material. I have to say, it was very plentiful when I was a kid, so when I look at it I think more of the restroom in my junior high school. So the pink marble of Tennessee is always a reminder to me as I go through the museum
of the state that I grew up in.
Works of art in order of appearanceLast Updated: June 22, 2015. Not all works of art in the Museum's collection may be on view on a particular day. For the most accurate location information, please check this page on the day of your visit. |
||
Poplars and Hillside, Newfound Gap Road, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee 1967 Eliot Porter (American) Dye transfer print Gift of the artist, in honor of David Hunter McAlpin, 1979 (1979.625.45) © 1990 Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas More information: The Collection Online Not on view
|
PhotographsSecond Floor | |
Red Tree Near Cades Cove, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee 1967 Eliot Porter (American) Dye transfer print Gift of the artist, in honor of David Hunter McAlpin, 1979 (1979.625.13) © 1990 Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas More information: The Collection Online Not on view
|
PhotographsSecond Floor | |
Tennessee 1866 Alexander H. Wyant (American) Oil on canvas Gift of Mrs. George E. Schanck, in memory of her brother, Arthur Hoppock Hearn (13.53) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
|
American Paintings and SculptureFirst and Second Floors | |
Pendant with Serpent Design 13th–14th century Mississippian peoples; Tennessee Shell The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Bequest of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1979 (1979.206.446) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
|
Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the AmericasFirst Floor | |
View on Tennessee River looking toward Chattanooga ca. 1864 George N. Barnard (American) Albumen silver print from glass negative Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1933 (33.65.407) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
|
PhotographsSecond Floor | |
Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) 18th century (1778) Jean-Antoine Houdon (French) French (Paris) Marble Gift of John Bard, 1872 (72.6) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
|
European Sculpture and Decorative ArtsFirst Floor | |
Andrew Jackson 1834–35; this carving, 1839 Hiram Powers (American) Marble Gift of Mrs. Frances V. Nash, 1894 (94.14) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
|
American Paintings and SculptureFirst and Second Floors | |
Chattanooga, Tennessee ca. 1864 George N. Barnard (American) Albumen silver print from glass negative Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1933 (33.65.404) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
|
PhotographsSecond Floor | |
Mr. and Mrs. Summers of Monteagle, Tennessee 1941, printed ca. 1954 Edward Weston (American) Gelatin silver print David Hunter McAlpin Fund, 1957 (57.519.5) ©1981 Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents More information: The Collection Online Not on view
|
PhotographsSecond Floor | |
[Wooden Farm Building, Tennessee] 1936–37 Walker Evans (American) Film negative Walker Evans Archive, 1994 (1994.258.22) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
|
PhotographsSecond Floor | |
[Street Preacher and Wagon on Sidewalk, Memphis, Tennessee] 1937 Walker Evans (American) Film negative Walker Evans Archive, 1994 (1994.253.378.3) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
|
PhotographsSecond Floor | |
[Album of Photographs of Electric Signs by the Gray Sign Company, Knoxville, Tennessee] 1911 Unknown Artist, American School Gelatin silver print Purchase, Saundra B. Lane Gift, 2005 (2005.263.1–.98) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
|
PhotographsSecond Floor | |
Water 1945 Charles Sheeler (American) Oil on canvas Arthur Hoppock Hearn Fund, 1949 (49.128) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
|
Modern and Contemporary ArtSecond Floor | |
Kneeling statue of Amenemope-em-hat Late Period, Dynasty 26, reign of Psamtik I, ca. 664–610 b.c. Egyptian; Apparently from Memphis, Ptah temple Graywacke Rogers Fund, 1924 (24.2.2) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
|
Egyptian ArtFirst Floor | |
"Carlton" room divider 1981 Ettore Sottsass (Italian, born Austria), Designer; Memphis s.r.l., Manufacturer Wood, plastic laminate John C. Waddell Collection, Gift of John C. Waddell, 1997 (1997.460.1ab) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
|
Modern and Contemporary ArtSecond Floor | |
"Murmansk" fruit dish 1982 Ettore Sottsass (Italian, born Austria); Manufacturer: Memphis Silver Gift of Ronald S. Kane, 1992 (1992.216.1) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
|
Modern and Contemporary ArtSecond Floor | |
© 2011 The Metropolitan Museum of Art |