The Tennessee State Museum has received an Excellence in Development Award from the Nashville Chapter of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) in the Large Public Sector Project category. The Museum was one of seven private- and public-sector projects to be recognized at ULI-Nashville’s virtual award gala on Tuesday, September 29.

The Tennessee State Museum will commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the founding of the United Nations by recognizing Tennessee-native Cordell Hull, whom President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called “The Father of the United Nations,” with a special temporary display from October 13-24, 2020. Titled Cordell Hull: Tennessee’s Father of the United Nations, the display will include the rare exhibition of Hull’s 1945 Nobel Peace Prize medal, on loan from the Friends of Cordell Hull, Pickett County, Tennessee. Born near present-day Byrdstown, Tennessee, Hull was awarded the medal in 1945 in recognition of his work creating the United Nations. It will be displayed along with several other items on loan from the Friends of Cordell Hull, Picket County, including Hull’s Nobel Peace Prize certificate and a bound first charter of the United Nations signed by Hull and others. A portrait of Hull by Casimir Gregory Stapko painted about 1945 from the State Museum’s collection will also be on exhibit.

The Tennessee State Museum will reopen to the public beginning on Wednesday, July 1, 2020 at 10 a.m., welcoming visitors back to experience Tennessee history, art, and culture from the state’s natural history beginnings through the present day. The Museum has taken the Tennessee Pledge and is committed to protecting the customers that it serves. In preparation for its reopening, the Museum is sharing the following important information, also made available on the Museum’s website at TNMuseum.org.

– The Tennessee State Museum has received prestigious recognition from two major national museum organizations. The Museum has been re-accredited by the American Alliance of Museums (AAM), the highest national recognition signifying excellence afforded the nation’s museums. In addition, the Museum is a recipient of an Award of Excellence from The American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) for its 2019-20 exhibition, Let’s Eat! Origins and Evolutions of Tennessee Food. The AASLH Leadership in History Awards, now in its 75th year, is the most prestigious recognition for achievement in the preservation and interpretation of state and local history.

In an abundance of caution for the protection of our visitors and our collection, the Tennessee State Museum will close to the public effective at 5:00 p.m. today, March 13 and remain closed through April 3. A public closure allows for the proper disinfecting protocol without damage to the artifacts and their displays. The closure also includes the Military Branch of the Museum at War Memorial.

UPDATED TO REFLECT NEW OPENING DATE - The stories of Tennesseans’ roles within the women’s suffrage movement – culminating with Tennessee’s ratification of the 19th amendment 100 years ago – are at the heart of a new 8,000 square-foot, two gallery exhibition at the Tennessee State Museum. Ratified! Tennessee Women and the Right to Vote opens April 24, 2020, and runs through March 28, 2021.

The Tennessee State Museum is pleased to announce the appointment of three new curators to its staff in the areas of decorative arts, social history, and textiles and fashion.

The Tennessee State Museum will mark the closing of its exhibition, Let’s Eat! Origins and Evolutions of Tennessee Food, on Sunday, February 2, 2020 at 2:00 p.m. with a special “In Conversation” event featuring mother and daughter, Alice Randall and Caroline Randall Williams, authors of Soul Food Love (Clarkson Potter, 2015). The event is free and open to the public.

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tony Award-winning musical sensation, Hamilton, comes to the Tennessee Performing Arts Center (TPAC) December 31, 2019 - January 19, 2020. Coinciding with the musical’s run, the Tennessee State Museum will present a unique lecture event on Saturday, January 11, 2020 at 2:00 p.m., “Hamilton: How the Musical Remixes American History” with University of Maryland historian Dr. Richard Bell. In this talk, which has been presented to sold-out audiences at the Smithsonian, the Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh and a dozens of other cultural institutions throughout the country, Dr. Bell explores this musical phenomenon to reveal what its success tells us about the marriage of history and show-business.

The Tennessee State Museum Military Branch, an outpost of the Museum located in historic War Memorial Building in downtown Nashville, will close for approximately six weeks this fall in order to update its exhibitions. The Branch is scheduled to close to the public on Tuesday, November 12, 2019 and reopen on Friday, December 13, 2019. Because the Military Branch is traditionally closed on Sundays and Mondays, it’s last day open to the public before the temporary closing will be Saturday, November 9 from 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

The Tennessee State Museum, through a partnership with the Tenement Museum in New York City, invites Tennesseans throughout the state to share personal stories of cultural identity, American immigration and migration through their everyday objects. Your Story, Our Story, is a national initiative of the Tenement Museum and its partners across the United States. It works with museums, colleges, schools, libraries, and community groups who all contribute stories from their part of the United States, with the goal of uncovering the patterns and differences of our experiences across the country. Users can explore stories from across the country, upload a story that carries meaning in your family, and join the Tenement Museum and Tennessee State Museum, in telling the stories of American migration and cultural identity.

The Tennessee State Museum has been officially designated as a stop on the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development’s statewide Tennessee Music Pathways trail. The designation, marked with a sign near the Museum’s Rosa L. Parks entrance at its Nashville location and an entry on the Music Pathways website, recognizes the Museum’s significance in identifying, explaining and preserving the legacy of music in Tennessee. Music Pathways locations connect visitors to the people, places and genres significant to music history.

The Tennessee State Museum, in partnership with Nashville Opera, will present a free performance for voice and piano of American composer Samuel Barber’s 1947 classic, “Knoxville: Summer of 1915,” in the Grand Hall of the Museum on Sunday, July 7, 2019 at 2:00 p.m. The composition, based on Knoxville-native James Agee’s 1938 prose poem of the same name, will help mark the final day of the Museum exhibition, Between the Layers: Art and Story in Tennessee Quilts.”

The Tennessee State Museum will explore the rich and diverse history of Tennessee’s food through a new exhibition, Let’s Eat! Origins and Evolutions of Tennessee Food, set to open on August 9, 2019 at the Museum’s Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park location in Nashville and run through February 2, 2020.

The Tennessee State Museum will mark 20 years of the Titans in Tennessee with Touchdown Titans! The NFL in Tennessee, a special display in the Grand Hall of the Museum that will run from Tuesday, April 23 – Sunday, May 5, 2019. Scheduled to coincide with the NFL Draft in Nashville from April 25-27, the display in the Grand Hall includes artifacts related to the team’s arrival as the Tennessee Oilers in 1997, its historic 1999 “Music City Miracle” season, and its continuing growth.