Delta Blues Museum

The Delta Blues Museum is dedicated to creating a welcoming place where visitors find meaning, value, and perspective by exploring the history and heritage of the unique American musical art form of the blues.

The City of Clarksdale, located at the intersection of Highways 61 and 49 ("the crossroads"), and the surrounding Delta region are known as "the land where the blues began".

Since its creation, the Delta Blues Museum has preserved, interpreted, and encouraged a deep interest in the story of the blues. Established in 1979 by the Carnegie Public Library Board of Trustees and re-organized as a stand-alone museum in 1999, the Delta Blues Museum is the state's oldest music museum. A five-member board appointed by the Mayor and Board of Commissioners of Clarksdale governs the museum. Funded by the City of Clarksdale, admissions, memberships, gift shop revenue, granting agencies and donations, the museum uses public and private funds to carry out its mission.

Since 1999, the Delta Blues Museum has been housed in the historic Clarksdale freight depot, built in 1918 for the Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad. The building was designated a Mississippi Landmark Property in 1996. The former freight area and the adjacent Muddy Waters expansion - about seven thousand square feet of ground floor space - is devoted to permanent and traveling exhibits.

A 2013 recipient of the IMLS National Medal for Museum and Library Services - the nation's highest honor for museum and library service to the community - as well as a 2014 winner of the National Arts & Humanities Youth Program Award, the Delta Blues Museum is dedicated to creating a welcoming place where visitors find meaning, value and perspective by exploring the history and heritage of the unique American musical art form, the Blues, as a Great River Road Interpretive Center.