Memphis Metal Museum

Perched on a bluff above the Mississippi just south of downtown Memphis, the Metal Museum is the only institution in the United States dedicated entirely to fine metalwork. It was founded in nineteen seventy-six as a craft center and museum, and its grounds include working forges, a foundry, and a blacksmithing studio open to visitors. Artists in residence produce everything from wrought-iron gates to lost-wax bronze sculpture here, carrying on traditions that trace back to the ornamental ironwork that once decorated antebellum plantations and river steamboats across the Mid-South.

The museum campus includes a restored nineteenth-century Marine Hospital building and grounds that look straight down onto Mud Island and the river below. For anyone who thinks a museum has to be hands-off and quiet, the Metal Museum answers with fire and hammer.