June 2016
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Today in Mississippi
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Museum of the Mississippi Delta Tells the story of cotton and oh, so much more
By Nancy Jo Maples Art, archaeology, agriculture, antiques and animals are all focuses at the Museum of the Mississippi Delta in Greenwood. “What started as a place to preserve the history of cotton farming has become so much more than that,” Cheryl Taylor Thornhill, executive director, said. The museum opened in 1969 as Cottonlandia Museum by a group of local citizens whose main mission was to preserve cotton’s story. The museum still highlights the crop with agricultural exhibits such as a bale of cotton from the 1920s and a cotton press. The museum’s focus expanded, however, as people began to donate artifacts of other topics. In addition to paintings and sculpture by Mississippi artists, its galleries highlight pre-Columbian pottery, Native American tools, a 65-million-year-old mosasaur vertebrae and military artifacts. The name was changed four years ago to better reflect the museum’s mission. The museum, which draws about 5,000 visitors each year, underwent a $450,000 renovation last year and can now feature larger traveling exhibits. The improvements include better lighting, new flooring, new restrooms and a new kitchen. It also added a 120foot outdoor mural entitled “Spirit of the Yazoo” by Robin Whitfield. “The renovation gave us a nicer visitor flow. We didn’t build an addition; instead we knocked out walls and created larger spaces so that we can accommodate larger exhibits,” Thornhill said. Many visitors are drawn to the Delta region because of the Blues Trail. Thornhill said the Museum of the Mississippi Delta incorporates information about prominent blues musicians into its historical exhibits
The Museum of the Mississippi Delta, above, formerly known as Cottonlandia, is housed in the former corporate headquarters of Billups Petroleum Co., in Greenwood. Its extensive permanent collection of Native American artifacts, including this clay bowl, above right, fills one of the renovated museum’s new galleries, below left. The renovation allows the museum to host larger traveling exhibits, such as “The Power of Children: Making a Difference,” left, which was featured in the spring.
when appropriate, but “we leave the blues and the blues history to those museums.” Among the permanent exhibits is the Malmaison Room, which features furniture, photographs and artifacts from Malmaison. Malmaison was the home of
Greenwood Leflore, the last chief of the Choctaw tribe before their removal to Oklahoma in the late 1800s. A plethora of artwork created by Mississippians lines the walls of the museum’s conference room and hallways. Featured artists are Theora Hamblett, Marie Hutt, Saul Hammons, Maude Schuyler Clay and Streater Odom Spencer. Historic farm artifacts permanently on display include mule-drawn plows, harrows, cotton sacks and other tools. A domestic hardware section showcases antique sewing machines, washboards and butter churns. Native American items are axes, game and nutting stones, spear points, arrow heads and polychrome hand-made pottery. The museum is also home to the South’s most extensive collection of “Avenue Polychrome” ceramic vessels manufactured by American Indians living in the Yazoo-Mississippi River Valley during the Mississippian period 700 years ago. The museum houses the largest collection of Spanish Colonial trade beads in the Southeast, a 12,000-year-old mastodon skeleton and the remains of Ice Age animals. Continued on page 18