Ghost Ballet (100-ft gantry sculpture)

Across the Cumberland River from downtown, a tangle of red steel arcs rises from a base that was once a gantry crane. Ghost Ballet for the East Bank Machineworks, by New York sculptor Alice Aycock, is 100 feet high, 100 feet wide and 60 feet deep, and Metro Arts lists it as installed in 2007 on the east bank, opposite downtown.

WPLN reported its dedication on 26 July 2007, describing it as the first project completed under Nashville’s public art programme and a work of sprawling steel arcs weighing 12 tons. It was funded under the Percent for Public Art Ordinance after a nationwide competition. Metro Arts says the main structure is made of arced, red-painted steel trusses that twist upward from the crane base to form a disconnected spherical shape, with a red aluminium "turbine whirlwind" at ground level and a neon fixture that lights the centre at night. Tnemec, a coatings company, says the sculpture rests on a gantry crane once used to build and launch barges, and that it was recoated in 2014 when the original red finish began to fade.