Frist Art Museum, Nashville

The Frist Art Museum is housed in a white marble building that was built in the 1930s to serve as the city's main post office. When the main post office was moved closer to the airport in 1986, the historic old facility became a downtown branch using only a small portion of one floor. In the early 1990s Thomas Fearn Frist Jr. and his family, through the charitable Frist Foundation, decided the old post office building at 919 Broadway would be a good location for a proposed downtown art museum. In 2001, the Frist opened with about 24,000 square feet of gallery space that is used to present visual art from local, state and regional artists, as well as major U.S. and international exhibitions.

As a non-collecting museum, the Frist doesn't have a permanent collection in the truest sense; rather, it focuses on creating exhibitions as well as securing traveling exhibitions from around the country and the world, such as surrealism, printmaking, water color painting, cartoons and natural canvases by local and regional artists. Most impressive, the upstairs offers interactive activities for young and old, so make sure to try their hand at the different art mediums!

An example of Art Deco and Stripped Classicism architectural style, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.