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For Your Consideration 7.1

Give Me Memphis, Tennessee

Going to Memphis, Tennessee? Be sure to check out their many and varied museums, in addition to eating great barbeque and listening to the blues. Among the cultural attractions you might wish to visit are:

  • Center for Southern Folklore 209 Beale Street. Documents the lives and traditions of the people of the South with entertaining films and exhibits.
  • The Dixon Gallery and Gardens 4339 Park Avenue. French impressionist paintings and 18th-century porcelain housed in a Georgian-style mansion, plus 17 acres of open vistas and formal gardens.
  • Downtown Precinct Museum 159 Beale Street. Combination working police station and museum with displays of confiscated weapons, mug shots, and a jail cell.
  • Graceland 3764 Elvis Presley Boulevard. The lavishly furnished mansion and automobile collection of Elvis Aaron Presley.
  • Hunt-Phelan Home 533 Beale Street. An historic home built in the 1800s, contains period antiques, elaborate gardens, and dozens of relics from the Civil War.
  • Memphis Botanic Garden 750 Cherry Road. Ninety-six acres of gardens in Audubon Park.
  • Memphis Brooks Museum of Art 1934 Poplar Avenue. A large permanent collection of Italian Renaissance, baroque, and American 20th-century paintings and sculpture.
  • Memphis Pink Palace Museum and Planetarium 3050 Central Avenue. Regional museum of cultural and natural history.
  • National Civil Rights Museum 450 Mulberry Street. Located at the historic Lorraine Motel, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Exhibits chronicle the American civil rights movement.

Tasteful Collections

Italians revere the art of the table, so it follows that in Italy there would be museums devoted to such matters. The Docent Educator has learned of the Museum of the Civilization of Olive Oil in Trevi, Umbria. The museum’s collection traces the ancient route of the olive tree from Asia Minor to Italy. Also in Umbria is the Lungarotti Wine Museum in Torgiano. Housed in a villa on the Lungarotti estate, the collection features Etruscan wine vessels, Bacchus-themed paintings from Mantegna to Picasso, and more. And, fans of tableware will enjoy the Ceramics Museum in Vietri sul Mare, Campania, which displays four centuries’ worth of local plates and pottery.

“For Your Consideration,” The Docent Educator 7.1 (Autumn 1997): 18.

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