THE MUSEUM

The Museum

The Elkins Museum is a contemporary art museum committed to rethinking institutional tradition.

The museum is located inside a historic Network Publications marketing building previously housed on Nashville's West End. After decades of disrepair, the building was acquired by an artist who renovated and reestablished it as The Elkins Museum. In June 2025, the museum was donated to the Woodard Foundation and relocated to its current location in Sylvan Park.

Today, the building operates as a single gallery museum in close partnership with a wide network of community artists and local publics. It continues to grow its programming through residencies, exhibitions, and community partnerships.

Learn more about our exhibits and plan your visit today.

Architectural History: What is Mimetic Architecture?

Mimetic architecture emerged in early-to-mid 20th-century America as a popular form of roadside architecture. It includes buildings shaped like giant coffee pots, animals, fruits, or household objects—designed to catch attention and convey the purpose of what lays inside. Architectural historians like Robert Venturri and Denise Scott Brown referred to these structures as “ducks,” a term drawn from a Long Island shop shaped like a giant duck, which sold duck-related goods.

The structure that now houses the Elkins Museum is a recognizable relic, once used to distribute real estate pamphlets along Nashville’s West End. It is shaped in the form of a small house—with a pitched roof, traditional dormer windows, and a gabled front.

In renovating the structure into a museum, the founding artist chose to preserve the mimetic architecture, making visible the layers of fiction and form that underlie artistic institutions.

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