The Walter Anderson Museum in Ocean Springs on Tuesday, May 21, 2024.
Hannah Ruhoff
Sun Herald
A Mississippi Coast museum is one of two art museums in the state named among the best in the South in a recent list by Southern Living.
The list includes 17 art museums in the South — from world-famous museums to smaller spaces — that are “worth planning a trip around.”
Here’s where you should go to view great art in Mississippi.
Which MS Coast art museum made the list?
The Walter Anderson Museum, located in Ocean Springs, is one of the best museums to view art in the South, according to Southern Living.
The nationally accredited art museum features drawings, paintings, murals, sculptures and more of Walter Anderson, a Louisiana-born artist who lived most of his life in Ocean Springs.
Along with a collection of more than 1,000 objects, the museum displays special exhibitions by visiting artists, according to the museum’s website.
Southern Living recommends beginning your museum visit in The Little Room where “floor-to-ceiling renderings reveal [Anderson’s] vision of a perfect day from dawn to night.”
Which other MS art museum made the list?
The Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, located in Laurel, also made Southern Living’s list.
“The Lauren Rogers Museum of Art is an intimate space where small works feel at home and where an array of American and European pieces is approachable,” according to the magazine.
Which art museums are the best in the South?
These 17 spaces made Southern Living’s list for the best art museums in the South:
- Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas
- Birmingham Museum of Art in Birmingham, Alabama
- Booth Western Art Museum in Cartersville, Georgia
- Odgen Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, Louisiana
- Baltimore Museum of Art in Baltimore, Maryland
- The Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida
- John and Marble Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida
- Walter Anderson Museum of Art in Ocean Springs, Mississippi
- Reynolda in Winston-Salem, North Carolina
- Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma
- Telfair Museums in Savannah, Georgia
- High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia
- Lauren Rogers Museum of Art in Laurel, Mississippi
- Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia
- Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, South Carolina
- Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia
- Huntington Museum of Art in Huntington, West Virginia
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Natalie Demaree is a service journalism reporter covering Mississippi for McClatchy Media. She holds a master’s in journalism from Columbia Journalism School and a bachelor’s in journalism and political science with a specialization in African and African American Studies from the University of Arkansas.