Metal and Mounds in Memphis

There are so many fantastic things to see in Memphis that the lesser known National Ornamental Metal Museum doesn’t usually show up in a top 10 list. However, it is worth a visit if you are at all interested in metal arts. According to their website, “The Metal Museum is the only institution in the United States devoted exclusively to the art and craft of fine metalwork. Unlike conventional art museums, it isn't just a place where art is displayed; it's a place where art is made. At the Metal Museum you can see works of art, see artists work, learn the craft and craft the art.” It is housed in several historic buildings right on the banks of the Mississippi River. Mark Twain described the view from this spot as the finest between Cairo and New Orleans.

The permanent collection includes sculpture, hardware, architectural pieces, and tools from the Renaissance to contemporary. I especially liked some of the architectural pieces such as this front door (made for the artist’s home in Hawaii, but it never got there).  

They have a small sculpture garden. I can't resist a sculpture garden of any size!

They also have temporary exhibitions. When my daughter and I visited they had two. In the first, jewelry maker Arline Fisch combined “jellyfish, crochet and wire with blown air and lighting effects in order to transform the Metal Museum’s exhibition space into an underwater environment.” I was skeptical when I read about it, but I really liked it.  

The second was contemporary South African studio jewelry, and it consisted of “provocative, experimental and formally engaging works.”  It was hard to tell that these items were actually jewelry.  They included ornamented animal skulls and rings with huge glass bubbles containing animal bones.  I assume that these are meant to be museum pieces and not to be worn!

It’s always fun to see artists and artisans at work; we watched some of them pouring liquid metal outdoors and working inside the blacksmith shop.

As we were leaving the metal museum, a brick structure on the side of a hill across the street caught my eye. The hill is in a park so we walked over to it and climbed up to check out the arched brick doorway. It was bricked up and we couldn’t see inside.

We climbed to the top of the hill and saw that it was hollowed out on top.  I wondered if maybe it had been some type of small reservoir. It was very windy up there, and there was a great view of the river. We climbed down a different side and found three signs:  

Well, that explained it all and we saw that there is another mound a short distance away. Very cool! (Later, I did some reading and found that this park is called De Soto Park and the mounds were long deserted when De Soto arrived, so they date back further than 1500.)