Customs House Museum and Cultural Center Showcases Sculptor Olen Bryant

Clarksville, TN – Through October 16th, the Orgain and Bruner Galleries of the Customs House Museum and Cultural Center greet museum visitors with gentle faces of wood and ceramic. Olen Bryant: Tennessee Treasure celebrates the region’s favorite artists with an exhibition of thirty-one works.

Coming from private collectors as well as the Customs House’s own permanent collection, the show features delicate women from the 1950s to a large ironing board figure created in 2004.

Olen Bryant graduated from Murray State University, Murray, Kentucky in 1950 and the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield, Michigan in 1954.

He also studied at the Cleveland Institute of Art and the Institute in the Visual Arts in American Culture at the University of Delaware and the Winterthur Museum in 1967.

Bryant taught art from 1958 – 1991 spending twenty-seven years as Professor of Art and Chair of the Sculpture and Ceramics Department at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee. He was listed in Who’s Who in American Art in 1966.

Olen has been instrumental in the Tennessee arts culture. He developed an outreach art program for the Montgomery County middle and high schools as part of the Center for the Arts project. He was a founding member of Nashville Artist Guild and a founding member of Tennessee Association of Craft Artists.

Olen Bryant won the Distinguished Artists Award during the 2007 Governor’s Awards for the Arts. He received the first Arts and Heritage Development Council’s Lifetime Contribution to the Arts Award in 2006. He has more than twenty-two solo exhibitions to his credit and numerous pieces in public collections including Austin Peay State University Campus, the Hunter Museum of American Art in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and the Tennessee State Museum of Art and Cheekwood Museum of Art, both in Nashville, Tennessee.

This exhibit is sponsored in part by Planters Bank. For more information on above event contact Terri Jordan, Exhibits Curator, at 931.648.5780 or terri@customshousemuseum.org

About the Customs House Museum

Located in the heart of historic downtown Clarksville, Tennessee, the Customs House Museum and Cultural Center is the State’s second largest general museum. The original portion of the building was constructed in 1898 as a U.S. Post Office and Customs House for the flourishing tobacco trade. Incorporating a number of architectural styles, the original structure is one of the most photographed buildings in the region.

With over 35,000 square feet of the region’s best hands-on activities and special events…people of all ages agree – the Customs House Museum is well worth the stop!

The Explorer’s Gallery is packed with fun, learning and fantasy in Aunt Alice’s Attic, McGregor’s Market and kitchen, and of course – the Bubble Cave! Finally, get “all aboard” to see our fantastic model trains. Our volunteer engineers “ride the rails” every Sunday afternoon from 1:00pm to 4:00pm.

Regular museum hours are 10:00am to 5:00pm Tuesday through Saturday, and 1:00pm to 5:00pm on Sundays. Adult admission is $7.00, Senior Citizens and College ID $5.00, Ages 6 to 18 $3.00, and under six years and Museum members are free.

The Customs House Museum is located at 200 South Second Street. For more information, call 931.648.5780 or visit their website at www.customshousemuseum.org