Showing 1-18 of 18 results
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Brooks Museum of Art
Stately homes surround relaxing Overton Park, where the Brooks Museum of Art offers excellent exhibits from stonework to cartoons. The permanent collection includes Renaissance and Baroque paintings and sculptures, plus an extensive collection of American work.
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Center for Southern Folklore
The Center for Southern Folklore in Pembroke Sq at Peabody Place Mall, has a café, books, photographic arts and crafts, and holds free music performances, local tours and film screenings.
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Children's Museum of Memphis
The Children's Museum of Memphis near Liberty Bowl Stadium, gives the kids a chance to let loose and play in, on and with exhibits like a giant model heart, weaving loom and water wheel.
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Gibson Beale Street Showcase
At the giant Gibson Beale Street Showcase take the fascinating 45-minute tour of the guitar factory, where solid blocks of wood are transformed into legendary Gibson guitars. No kids under 5 admitted.
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Graceland
In the spring of 1957, at age 22, Elvis spent around US$100,000 on this house and 13.8 acres, called Graceland. He lived here until his death in 1977, and he's buried next to the swimming pool with his closest relatives. Priscilla Presley (who divorced Elvis in 1973) opened Graceland to tours in 1982, and now millions come here to pay homage to the King.
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Memphis Rock 'n' Soul Museum
The Smithsonian's Memphis Rock 'n' Soul Museum next to FedEx Forum, examines the social and cultural history that produced the music of the Mississippi Delta.
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Memphis Zoo
Within Overton park, the sprawling, world-class Memphis Zoo hosts two giant panda stars, Ya Ya and Le Le, in an around US$16 -million exhibit on native Chinese wildlife and habitat. The Northwest Passage section is home to polar bears, sea lions and eagles. Other residents include the full gamut of monkeys, penguins, African wildlife, etc. Imagine an animal, they probably have it.
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Mississippi River Museum
The Mississippi River Museum displays excellent exhibits depicting the cultural and physical history of the lower Mississippi River valley, including a supercool to-scale model of the river and Gulf.
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Mud Island River Park
A monorail (free with museum admission) and elevated walkway cross the Wolf River to Mud Island River Park where you can rent kayaks, canoes and bikes. Mud Island was made briefly famous when singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley drowned here while swimming in 1997 and was brought to shore at the foot of Beale St.
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National Civil Rights Museum
Housed in the Lorraine Motel, where the Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr was fatally shot on April 4, 1968, is the excellent National Civil Rights Museum. Five blocks south of Beale St, this museum's extensive exhibits, detailed timeline and accompanying audio tour chronicle the ongoing struggles for African American freedom and equality in the US.
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New Daisy Theater
The New Daisy Theater has art-deco backdrops depicting the district's honky-tonk heyday, and continues to hold concerts. The little-used Old Daisy Theater stands forlornly across the road.
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Orpheum Theater
The Orpheum Theater is restored to its 1928 glory and faced by an Elvis statue. Its Walk of Fame features musical notes embedded in the sidewalk with the names of well-known musicians.
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Pink Palace Museum & Planetarium
Pink Palace Museum & Planetarium sits 3 miles east of downtown. The 1923 mansion was built as a residence for Piggly Wiggly founder Clarence Saunders and opened in 1996 as a natural- and cultural-history museum. It mixes fossils, Civil War exhibits and an exact replica of the original 1916 Piggly Wiggly, the world's first self-service grocery store. It also has an Imax theater; tickets sold separately.
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Slave Haven Underground Railroad Museum/Burkle Estate
The Slave Haven Underground Railroad Museum/Burkle Estate in an unimposing clapboard house, is thought to have been a way station for runaway slaves on the underground railroad, complete with trapdoors and tunnels.
Read more about Slave Haven Underground Railroad Museum/Burkle Estate
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Stax Museum of American Soul Music
If the Stax Museum of American Soul Music fails to give visitors goose pimples it's because the original building was demolished long ago, but today's more stable structure echoes the past with a marquee blazing the reassuring words 'Soulsville USA.' Indeed, this venerable spot was soul music's epicenter in the 1960s, when Otis Redding, Booker T and the MGs and Wilson Pickett recorded here.
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Sun Studio
Any serious Elvis or American-music fan will want to visit historic landmark Sun Studio. Starting in the early 1950s, Sun's Sam Phillips recorded blues artists like Howlin' Wolf, BB King and Ike Turner, followed by the rockabilly dynasty of Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and, of course, the King of rock and roll, Elvis Presley (who started here in 1953).
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WC Handy House Museum
Dedicated to the songwriter and composer WC Handy is this Beale St museum. Around the corner, between 3rd and 4th Sts, is a statue of WC Handy that overlooks the Pepsi-Cola Pavilion, a park and outdoor amphitheater where bands jam in the summertime.
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Woodruff-Fontaine House
In the bucolic 'Victorian Village' district on Adams Ave, east of downtown, the grand 1870 Woodruff-Fontaine House carefully preserves Victorian clothing and furnishings, and guides tell ghost stories.
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Showing 1-18 of 18 results
