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Tennessee State Museum
Category: Arts & Entertainment Museums Museums [Edit]
505 Deaderick StNashville, TN 37243
Neighborhood: Downtown
(615) 741-2692
- Hours:
Tue-Sat 10 am - 5 pm
Sun 1 pm - 5 pm
- Good for Kids:
- Yes
5 reviews for Tennessee State Museum
5 reviews in English
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Review from Chloe M.
10/22/2011
Aww, after reading the other reviews, I want to give the Tennessee State Museum a big hug! I get what the other reviewers are saying, but considering the museum is free and I'm sure the vast majority of the collection are items that have been donated, I think it's a great museum.
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Review from Tanya m.
7/14/2011
This place rocks. It also gets extra points for being FREE.
It took us a minute to find the front door. There are many art galleries and state history theaters in the complex. It was not to hard to find the museum part of the complex. It is three levels of Tennessee History.
While the state museum centers mostly on the civil was period, there is a bit of prehistoric history also. this time they also had a special Egyptian exhibit also.
If you travel here with children it is a nice free thing to take them to. -
Review from Caitlin C.
Nashville, TN
2/27/2011
Let me preface this by saying my review maybe overly critical of this museum, mostly because I've had some very limited experience working in museums, things related, and it is one of the things I'm interested in doing as a 'career' whatever that means.
This museum is large and seeing as it is supposed to encompass an entire state you would expect it to be large. But you would also expect it's exhibits to be diverse...and well to be quite frank they're not. This museum's representation of Tennessean history is completely skewed towards white history. Let me break it down exhibits are 95% related to the white experience, 3% related to native Americans, and 1% related to anyone and anything else. I'm extremely interested in who/what is behind the choice of exhibits.
Also I found the exhibit plaques to be ....lacking to say the least. Almost none of them had dates of when the item was found or when it was used in the past. You're left to believe that all the native American pieces are from the same year. There is an abundance of 'over the mountain men' exhibits, civil war, statehood, creepy rich people's families portraits, and an obsession with Jackson...but no mention of anything but pre-white native American, and literally nothing on the black experience but a few measly walls dedicated to the black civil war soldier. So many people, cultures aren't even represented at all.
From my own personal perspective, museums like this are very dangerous. School field trips routinely come through this 3 story claustrophobic, freezing maze of exhibits...and they are getting a very narrow view of their state's history. Now I know budgets for museums are extremely tight, especially now, and adding/updating exhibits is probably ridiculously hard to do...but this place seriously needs it.
I'm not necessarily saying you shouldn't visit, it's free... and some of the stuff they have is interesting, and I did learn, but question everything at every museum you go to. -
Review from Wayne H.
Nashville, TN
5/25/2011 ROTD 10/5/2011
It's a nice enough museum. As previous reviewers have mentioned, there is some ethnocentrism here (I'm Chinese-any representation? no?) but I think they are improving, at least last time I visited. There is a new exhibit on slavery (small, but there), as well as an exhibition on the Civil Rights Movement.
The museum has a very strict, classic Southern narrative of history: a short section on the Natives, then white settlement, a large section on the glory days of Tennessee, the sixty-odd years between statehood and the Civil War when three US presidents came from Tennessee and it was one of the most populous, wealthy regions in the country. Then the apocalypse of war, with a long list of Confederate heroes and martyrs. Reconstruction and the 20th century finally rushed by with barely a blink. The Tennessee State Museum did have a large collection of paintings (which I agree was quite creepy), Appalachian quilts, guns, as well as artifacts from Andrew Jackson, Sam Houston, etc. The sizable Civil War Collection was also interesting, though it at times seemed uncomfortably favorable towards one Nathan Forrest. My guess is, this collection started in the 1900s and ended by the 1930s. For what it is however, it is quite impressive.
A block away , hidden at the bottom of the War Memorial Auditorium, is a small but likewise impressive collection on American conflicts Tennessee has distinguished itself in, notably the Spanish-American War, WWI and WWII. There is even a replica of Fat Boy, the Atom Bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It's worth a visit (and seems to need visitors).
Both museums are free, and if you are in the area, is worth poking around.Listed in: Culture Vultures, Civil War Americana
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Review from Ed R.
San Francisco, CA
2/17/2007
This museum is in no way sympathetic to the native American people's situation when the white man came. There is no mention of slavery here in the sections we saw. Some interesting and well presented facts, but not all of them.
