Museums in the South

Who says you can't find culture in the South? One look at what the nine state Southeastern area has to offer throws that notion right out the proverbial window.

Whether your tastes run to Renaissance and Baroque or Modern and Pop-art, the museums here all have a lot to offer. Grand masters like Manet, Modigliani, Picasso, Van Gogh, and Rembrandt are represented as well as local and regional artists making names for themselves. Much of the artwork you'll see when visiting are part of permanent collections and most museums feature temporary, traveling exhibitions. Check their individual websites to find out what's currently planned as well as to learn about their hours, prices (if any), and location.

Take a trip to the South ... You just may return home with a "cultured personality."

Alabama
Statewide Museum Information

Featured Museum:
Birmingham Museum of Art
2000, 8th Avenue North, Birmingham, AL

The Birmingham Museum of Art (BMA) is the largest municipal museum in the Southeast. It houses a permanent collection of national significance that includes over 21,000 works of art dating from ancient to modern times. The collection offers a diverse selection of artworks from Western (Renaissance to present) and non-Western cultures, the latter encompassing the largest and most comprehensive collection of Asian art in the Southeast. A multi-level outdoor sculpture garden enables art to be seen indoors and outdoors in a continuous flow. The museum also has a large and growing collection of African, Native American, and Precolumbian art.

Windy Winter Night - 1940
Watercolor on paper by Charles Burchfield
Birmingham Museum of Art

Florida
Statewide Museum Information

Featured Museum:
Orlando Museum of Art
2416 North Mills Avenue, Orlando, FL

The Orlando Museum of Art (OMA) features significant collections of American art, art of the ancient Americas, and African art. Gifts of American paintings by Charles Sheeler and Georgia O'Keeffe began the OMA's American Art Collection in the 1960s. In the 1970s, the OMA received a large donation of art of the ancient Americas and a small African collection, which became the foundation for their current and growing Art of the Ancient Americas and African Art Collections.

The continued emphasis on collecting art and the growth of its collections led the OMA to change its focus from an art center to an art museum and to change its name in 1986 from Loch Haven Art Center to the Orlando Museum of Art. The OMA has since received numerous important donations of art and continues to expand its collections through the generosity and support of the community.

Great Blue Heron - 1834
Engraving and aquatint on paper by John James Audubon
Orlando Museum of Art

Georgia
Statewide Museum Information

Featured Museum:
High Museum of Art
1280 Peachtree Street, NE, Atlanta, Georgia

From a stately home on Peachtree Street to its current award-winning buildings in a spectacular setting, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta has grown to become the leading art museum in the Southeastern United States with its renowned collection of classic and contemporary art and renowned architecture by Richard Meier and Renzo Piano.

The High Museum of Art strives to bring art education experiences to people of all ages throughout the Atlanta metropolitan area and beyond. The High serves the community through a wide range of both off-site and on-site programs.

Tree of Life - 1928
Oil on canvas by Max Ernst
High Museum of Art

Kentucky
Statewide Museum Information

Featured Museum:
The Speed Art Museum
2035 South Third St., Louisville, KY, USA

Established in 1927, the Speed Art Museum is Kentucky’s oldest and largest art museum with over 13,000 pieces in its permanent collection. Its extensive collection spans 6,000 years, ranging from ancient Egyptian to contemporary art.

The museum has distinguished collections of 17th century Dutch and Flemish painting, 18th century French art, Renaissance and Baroque tapestries, and significant holdings of contemporary American painting and sculpture.

Mademoiselle Pogany - 1913
Polished bronze by Constantin Brancusi
The Speed Art Museum

Louisiana
Statewide Museum Information

Featured Museum:
New Orleans Museum of Art
One Collins C. Diboll Circle, New Orleans, LA

Opened in 1911 as the Isaac Delgado Museum of Art, the New Orleans Museum of Art has grown into a cultural, recreational and educational resource which serves the City of New Orleans and the Gulf South. Ranked in the top 25 percent of the nation's 140 largest and most important art museums, NOMA's mission is to preserve and present a representative survey of the finest art mankind has produced, from antiquity to the present — extraordinary art from every century and every culture.

NOMA has expanded from an inaugural exhibition in 1911 of 400 works to the present permanent collection of more than 40,000 objects. The collection, noted for its extraordinary strengths in French and American art, photography, glass, African and Japanese art, continues to grow. In 1993 the Museum completed a $23 million expansion and renovation project, doubling its size.

Portrait of a Young Woman - 1918
Oil on canvas by Amedeo Modigliani
New Orleans Museum of Art

Mississippi
Statewide Museum Information

Featured Museum:
Mississippi Museum of Art
380 South Lamar Street, Jackson, MS

The Mississippi Museum of Art is the largest art museum in the state of Mississippi. Now located in a new facility in downtown Jackson, the Museum has something to offer everyone, from world class exhibitions, to summer camps for children, to adult enrichment seminars.

The MMA is home to the world's largest collection of art created by and relating to Mississippians and their diverse heritage. The collection is also notably strong in 19th and 20th century American landscape paintings, 18th century British paintings and furniture, Japanese prints, pre-Columbian ceramics and Oceanic art, photographs and folk art.

Onion Soup Can, c. 1965
Silkscreen by Andy Warhol
Mississippi Museum of Art

North Carolina
Statewide Museum Information

Featured Museum:
North Carolina Museum of Art
2110 Blue Ridge Road, Raleigh, NC

The state's art collection spans more than 5,000 years, from ancient Egypt to the present. The ancient collection includes Egyptian funerary art and important examples of sculpture and vase painting from the Greek and Roman worlds. The collection of European paintings and sculpture from the Renaissance through Impressionism is internationally celebrated with important works by Giotto, Sandro Botticelli, Raphael, Anthony van Dyck, Peter Paul Rubens, Antonio Canova, and Claude Monet. American art of the 18th and 19th centuries features paintings by John Singleton Copley, Thomas Cole, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, and William Merritt Chase. Modern art includes major works by such American artists as Marsden Hartley, Georgia O'Keeffe, Franz Kline, Frank Stella, Jacob Lawrence, Elizabeth Murray, and Joel Shapiro. Modern European masters include Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Paul Delvaux, Henry Moore, Anselm Kiefer, and Gerhard Richter. Galleries are also devoted to African, Ancient American, and Oceanic Art, as well as Jewish ceremonial art.

Two Nude Figures in a Landscape - 1913
Oil with wax on canvas by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
North Carolina Museum of Art

South Carolina
Statewide Museum Information

Featured Museum:
The Gibbes Museum of Art
135 Meeting Street, Charleston, SC

The Gibbes Museum of Art maintains approximately 10,000 objects that directly support its mission to "collect, conserve, and interpret an American fine arts collection with a Charleston perspective." This includes objects that reflect the distinct patronage of the region. The strength of the collection lies in its 18th, 19th and early 20th century paintings, works on paper (prints, drawings, watercolors, photographs), miniature portraits, and sculpture. The objects in each medium reinforce the history of Charleston as an important colonial and antebellum city, and today as a tourist destination.

Argus and Mercury
Wood-block print by Otto Neumann
The Gibbes Museum of Art

Tennessee
Statewide Museum Information

Featured Museum:
Cheekwood Museum of Art
1200 Forrest Park Drive, Nashville, TN

Cheekwood, the private home and 55-acre estate of the Cheek family, provides visitors with a unique experience of art and gardens. Completed in 1932, Cheekwood first opened to the public in 1960.

The Museum of Art is located in the former Cheek mansion. Built of limestone quarried from the property, The Museum is a fine example of Georgian-style architecture. The Museum of Art recently reopened after extensive renovation and hosts four major exhibitions yearly.

The Cheekwood Museum of Art actively collects American Art, European and American Decorative Arts and Contemporary Art. Strengths of the 8,000+ collection include American paintings of the Ashcan School ("The Eight"), Worcester Porcelain, American and related Silver, post-WWII prints and photographs, and sculpture by self-taught Tennessee artist William Edmondson.

Portrait of Andy, n.d.
Oil on canvas by Jamie Wyeth
Cheekwood Museum of Art