About the Tennessee State Museum
The Tennessee State Museum was established in 1937, when the General Assembly authorized a museum in Nashville's War Memorial Building, though Tennessee's museum tradition goes back to 1817, when portrait painter Ralph E. W. Earl opened a museum on the Nashville public square. In 1981 most of the collection moved into the James K. Polk Building, shared with the Tennessee Performing Arts Center, where it stayed until May 2018. On October 4, 2018, the museum opened its first purpose-built home, the 137,000-square-foot Bill Haslam Center at the corner of Rosa L. Parks Boulevard and Jefferson Street, on the northwest corner of Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park. The museum is governed by the Douglas Henry State Museum Commission.
Permanent galleries run in sequence from Natural History and First Peoples through Forging a Nation (1760-1860), The Civil War and Reconstruction, Change and Challenge, and Tennessee Transforms, linked by the Tennessee Time Tunnel, a chronological walk through the state's past. Six rotating galleries, a digital learning center, and a two-story Grand Hall host temporary shows; recent titles include Tennessee Voices, American Stories; Tennessee Made: Three Grand Divisions of the Arts; and The Tennessee Playlist, a survey of music from all 95 counties. A hands-on Children's Gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Sunday 1 to 4:30 p.m. The museum's Military Branch remains in the War Memorial Building downtown, covering overseas conflicts from the Spanish-American War through World War II.
Collections and Research Services
The collection is strongest in Civil War material, including uniforms, battle flags, and weapons, and also holds Tennessee-made art, furniture, textiles, pottery, and photographs. A limited portion of items on display and in storage can be searched through the museum's online collection portal, and the museum posts photography and copyright request procedures for researchers who need images. The museum is not an archive or genealogy library, so plan on using the state library and archives for documents. Educators can borrow traveling trunks on topics from the Cherokee removal to the 1920 suffrage ratification, and the museum's blog and video library preserve its Lunch and Learn lectures and the TN Writers | TN Stories author series. If you are starting a family or house project in Tennessee, our guides to free family history research and old city directories point to the records you will need.
Planning Your Visit
Admission is free. The museum is open Tuesday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday 1 to 5 p.m., closed Mondays, New Year's Day, Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. The address is 1000 Rosa L. Parks Blvd., Nashville, TN 37208. Free parking is available in the lot shared with the Nashville Farmers' Market, which fills quickly on weekends, and there is free two-hour street parking along 6th and 7th Avenues; visitors are asked not to park in the adjacent Germantown and Jefferson Street neighborhoods. Four accessible spaces sit about 210 paces from the entrance on a flat sidewalk, and drop-off is allowed at the Rosa L. Parks Boulevard entrance. Wheelchairs, portable stools, and lockers (some with phone chargers) are free; bags larger than 11 by 15 inches must be checked, and no food, drink, or firearms are allowed in the galleries. WeGo bus routes 42, 22, and 29 stop at Rosa Parks and Jefferson. Questions go to (615) 741-2692 or info@tnmuseum.org, and the events calendar is at tnmuseum.org.
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