Artist's light structures come to Nashville show

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Renowned artist Bruce Munro's lighting structures will be displayed at an exhibition called "Light" at Nashville's Cheekwood Botanical Garden & Museum of Art.

There will be 10 large-scale outdoor and indoor installations as well as indoor sculptures on exhibit May 24 to Nov. 10, 2013. Three of the installations are new and another hasn't been shown before in the U.S.

Munro uses glass, copper, brass, timber and stainless steel and hundreds of miles of glowing optical fiber in his art. The center of the exhibit will be his largest ever installation of "Field of Light" with 20,000 lighted glass spheres, each atop a stem that rises from the ground.

Munro first visited Cheekwood earlier this year and several of the installations will specific to the gardens, Cheekwood officials said.

"This is the most perfect place to exhibit because it provides a variety of opportunities to respond to — each space varies in both scale and topographical character," Munro said in a statement.

The exhibit also will include illuminated sculptures inside Cheekwood's art museum.

The project is only the second by Munro in the United States. In 2012, he debuted Light at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pa. He's also had work displayed at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Cheekwood, an estate of 55 acres with a Georgian style mansion, was built by the family that once owned the Maxwell House Coffee brand and opened as a privately funded botanical garden and art museum in 1960. It will be open evenings during the exhibit to showcase the light displays.

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Online:

Cheekwood: http://cheekwood.org/

Bruce Munro: http://www.brucemunro.co.uk/