As a Vanderbilt undergrad, Rowanne McKnight missed having art history as a second major by just three hours of study.
But she wasn’t trying to get one at the time, focusing more on her business and marketing studies. Today, as curator of the Nashville Artist Collective, the irony is obvious.
“It was a happy accident that I ended up at Vanderbilt,” McKnight says. “I had grown up in New Orleans, so I was always around a lot of creativity. When I came to Vanderbilt, the university opened me up to the field of art history. I found art so relaxing and restorative.”
Although certainly art galleries have been in existence for years, the Artist Collective was founded to change the traditional art gallery business model, providing an online platform for local artists to grow their potential. The new online gallery format also makes buying art less intimidating for the client. This digital portal has evolved over the years to include brick-and-mortar galleries where the Nashville Artist Collective provides access to affordable, original art to collectors of all ages and levels of expertise.
According to McKnight, one of the first things that clicked about Nashville when she started at Vanderbilt was the music scene. She found it vibrant and exhilarating. After college, she worked for Warner Brothers as a country music promotions representative supporting the music artists through their album releases, tours, etc. Although her strengths are in marketing and business, McKnight has always been in a creative angle of business. She found that the creative brains in the music industry parallel those of visual artists.
Founding the Nashville Artist Collective was another stroke of providence. McKnight met Allison Williamson, the founder of the Charleston Artist Collective, at a marketing conference in 2013. They struck up a friendship, and McKnight recognized that Nashville would represent tremendous opportunity for an Artist Collective—making it the third market after Charleston and Atlanta.
Having launched the Nashville market in 2016, McKnight now represents 17 different artists. She is careful to understand and support each artist’s unique goals, considering herself their business partner. Artists represented by the Nashville Collective submit three to five pieces each month to continually update the collection.
In 2021, the Nashville Artist Collective moved to a 3,000-plus square foot building located in Berry Hill. McKnight points out that sharing space with Woven Goods Company, a vintage rug and textile store, enhances the creative vibe. Within the shared space, one can find vintage furniture and an atmosphere that balances antiquity with a modern edge. The location has become a destination for designers to come to find finishing touches.
“To promote our artists, we publish the art online and keep the walls in our gallery refreshed each month, so the art is accessible and ever changing,” says McKnight. “We want the art to be new and interesting, but also approachable. To that end, I encourage artists to have smaller versions of their pieces, so that there is something for every budget.”
McKnight says she’s always looking for something she doesn’t have in the Collective—a medium, a style, or a distinctive new voice.
“I love the relationship with the artists and getting to know them on a personal level,” she says. “I feel like I’m not in sales; rather, I’m talking about someone [the artist] I care about. At the end of the day, it’s much more about collaboration than competition. The artists and I have a lot to learn from each other.”
Although there is a brick-and-mortar presence, the Nashville Artist Collective still sees considerable business coming from its online hub, with buyers logging on from thousands of miles away.
“Our online presence makes Nashville art available anywhere,” explains McKnight. “In fact, 50 percent of our clients come from outside Nashville. Six years ago, when we started, an online presence was more unusual. Today, most people under age 40 are making full design decisions online.”
As a communications major, McKnight could hardly anticipate the path her career would take. But, in the end, the Nashville Artist Collective represents for McKnight the crossroads of art and enterprise—a logical utilization of her communications and marketing background and her artistic eye.
“Nashville continues to be such an amazing creative vortex, and the Nashville Artist Collective is strongly positioned to be able to promote our local talent,” says McKnight. “I couldn’t be happier in what I do.”
Even if she had planned it all those years ago. (438 Melrose Ave., 615-594-1386; nashville.artistcollectives.org)