14/10/2024

JBC Design

Comfort At Home

Museum at Beauford Delaney home in Knoxville is designed to inspire

Hoping to inspire a new generation of young creatives in East Knoxville and bring in admirers from across the globe to celebrate one of the greatest modern painters of the 20th century, the Beck Cultural Exchange Center is breaking ground on the Delaney Museum at Beck.

The new museum includes a restoration of the only remaining ancestral home of world-famous artist Beauford Delaney and will preserve an extraordinary piece of Knoxville history.

“We wanted to create a space and a destination place for tourism and a place we can display artwork and some of the archives and anything related to the Delaney family. We hope this will get people interested in discovering their own roots,” said Derek Spratley, court-appointed administrator for the estate of Beauford Delaney.

“I used to drive by this house probably a thousand times in my lifetime and I had no idea that there was a world-renowned artist, arguably one of the most important artists of our time, certainty from this city. I had no idea that type of talent lived in my neighborhood.”

The Delaney home, built in 1910, sits next door to the Beck Cultural Center on Dandridge Avenue. The Beck Center bought the home in 2015 because it was distressed and in need of stabilization.