Mississippi River Museum to open for season in May
The Mississippi River Museum on Mud Island will open in the spring for its first full season since updates were made to make the 37-year-old venue more modern and engaging, officials said March 5.
The museum will begin welcoming visitors again on May 2.
The attraction highlighting the history and ecology of North America’s longest river was closed for several weeks last summer to make time for a facilities facelift.
Officials with the Memphis River Parks Partnership — the city-funded agency that manages parks and attractions along the Mississippi — said at the time the museum was suffering from low attendance and that the exhibits at the decades-old venue were old fashioned and no longer engaging.
George Abbott, director of external affairs for the MRPP, said small changes were made over the summer that helped update the feel of the river museum, which opened in 1982 and seemed to be stuck in that decade, he said.
“It’s not state-of-the-art by any means, but it feels a lot better,” he said.
After Abbott started at MRPP, he and a colleague tried to brainstorm ways to spruce up the museum without having to expend a great deal of time or money.
They ended up hiring a Memphis College of Art graduate who told them to “give me $500 and three weeks” and she could make significant improvements.
They hired Ruby Zielinski and, as promised, she repainted the museum using a crew of friends and family members and made a few other changes that give the space a more open, airy feel, Abbott said.
Lightboxes were replaced with more streamlined, modern signage and a new gallery was opened featuring rotating exhibits on modern Memphis.
“What she managed to do in there with a real shoestring budget and without bringing in anyone externally,” was impressive, he said.
The flow of the museum was also redesigned so, instead of exiting into the gift shop, museum visitors conclude their visit by stepping outside for views of the river, Abbott wrote in a blog post about the updates.
This season, staff at the river parks partnership are looking to see how the updates impact visitorship — most of which comes from school groups and summer camps — before considering any other changes to the facility.
Abbott acknowledged making more changes to the museum could catch people’s interest and draw them in. But
Mississippi River Museum
Open: Thursday through Sunday, starting May 2 he also said larger changes could be coming to the Mud Island area that could impact Mud Island Park and the museum, and MRPP didn’t want to pour time and money into the facility until it was clear how the area around it would be changing, and what role the museum could play in that.
The museum is made up of a series of 18 galleries and exhibits that cover 10,000 years of river history, including the role it played in the Civil War and the part it continues to play in transportation and shipping in the U.S.
More than 5,000 river-related artifacts are housed at the museum, according to the Memphis River Parks Partnership, including two full-size replicas of boats for museum-goers to explore. Mud Island Park also hosts a scale model of a portion of the river and a 5,000-seat outdoor amphitheater, also managed by the river parks partnership.
Corinne Kennedy is a reporter at The Commercial Appeal. She can be reached at Corinne.kennedy @Commercialappeal.com or on Twitter @Corinneskennedy.
Where: Mud Island Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.