MESDA: Devoted to Southern Decorative Arts
Popularly known as MESDA, the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts is the only museum dedicated to researching, collecting, and exhibiting the decorative arts of the early American South.
MESDA was established in 1965 with the goal of disproving the widely held assumption that the only significant decorative arts made in colonial and early America were made in New England and the Middle Atlantic. The museum now houses the finest collection of decorative arts - furniture, ceramics, paintings, needlework, metalwork - made by artists and artisans working before the Civil War in Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
In January 2009 MESDA opened a new installation of its permanent collection. Southernisms: People and Places, the MESDA Collection explores the history of the South through the objects made and used by its peoples. All tours are guided, last approximately 50 minutes, and leave every hour on the hour. Changing exhibits take place in the G. Wilson Douglas, Jr. Exhibition Gallery and online at MESDA.org. MESDA is open Tuesday through Saturday, 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Sunday 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. The final guided tour begins at 4 p.m. each day. MESDA is closed on Mondays, Easter Sunday, Thanksgiving Day, December 24, and Christmas Day.
MESDA is also home to the nationally acclaimed MESDA Research Center. The MESDA Research Center houses the MESDA Craftsmen Database, a collection of information on nearly 80,000 southern craftsmen gleaned from more than thirty-years of reading primary source documents. It is also home to the MESDA Object Database, a collection of almost 20,000 objects recorded by MESDA researchers throughout the South. Both databases, in addition to the Old Salem Museums & Gardens Library, are open to the public Tuesday through Friday, 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Appointments are strongly encouraged and can be scheduled by contacting the MESDA Research Center (Research@oldsalem.org or call 336-721-7379) Through a partnership with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Carolina Digital Libraries and Archives MESDA's Research Center - including the Craftsmen Database, the Object Database, and four-decades of MESDA's Journal of Early Southern Decorative Arts - will soon be available free-of-charge anywhere in the world via the internet.
MESDA programming throughout the year includes annual seminars on antique furniture (February) and antique textiles (March); a series of in depth Saturday seminars (Fall), a four-week graduate-level Summer Institute on southern decorative arts and material culture in partnership with the University of Virginia (July), as well as other museum classes, seminars, workshops, lectures, and specialized tours throughout the year. MESDA also organizes programs outside of the museum, including the biennial MESDA Conference on American Material Culture.
MESDA's award-winning publications include the Frank L. Horton series of books on the decorative arts of the South, which now includes titles on the furniture of Charleston, South Carolina, Tennessee silver, the pottery of the Shenandoah Valley (out of print), and the furniture of coastal North Carolina (out of print). Available titles can be purchased at the museum's bookstore during normal operating hours, or at anytime through MESDA.org.
One of the three museums of Old Salem Museums and Gardens, MESDA is located within the Old Salem historic district in the Frank L. Horton Museum Center.
MESDA is open Tuesday through Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Sunday from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. Admission is charged. The museum is handicapped accessible. For more information on visiting MESDA its research facilities, call (336) 721-7360 or visit MESDA.org
