Image: Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art, Nashville
Cheekwood will host a gallery talk with artist-in-residence Maura Wright on July 23, offering visitors a chance to hear directly from the ceramic artist about work inspired by the Nashville institution’s gardens, decorative arts holdings and historic architecture. The 30-minute talk is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. in the museum’s second-floor gallery and is available with Thursday Night Out tickets.
The event sits within Cheekwood’s summer programming, which combines evening concerts, gallery access and ticketed special events across the estate. Wright’s talk is positioned before the Thursday Night Out concert begins, giving audiences an early look at the installation and the thinking behind it before the evening’s live music in the gardens.
According to Cheekwood, Wright is based in Kansas City, Missouri, and works in clay vessels and sculptural forms. The museum says her residency will focus on Cheekwood’s decorative arts holdings, including the porcelain collection, alongside the gardens and the estate’s historic architecture. Her practice combines sculptural ceramics with painted environments that evoke frescoed interiors and decorative wall treatments, creating installations that consider the relationship between objects, ornament and the spaces they inhabit.
Cheekwood’s event listing also identifies the artist’s educational background: Wright received an MFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 2018 and a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2013. The museum notes that her work has been shown at galleries and institutions across the United States and has been featured in Architectural Digest, Surface Magazine, Curbed and Dwell.
An image caption on the event page includes Wright’s work 'Yellow Amphora' from 2024, described as earthenware, slip, glaze and luster. The page also includes a studio photograph by Will Warasila. Cheekwood says the artist-in-residence program is made possible through the support of the Shallenberger family.
The talk takes place at Cheekwood Museum in Nashville on July 23, 2026, from 5:30 to 6:00 p.m. The institution’s event page says the program is held on the second floor of the museum and that visitors should double-check the date when reserving tickets. Gardens-only, gardens-plus-mansion and member ticket prices are listed on the event page, and the talk is tied to the broader Thursday Night Out schedule at Cheekwood.
