Walter Anderson Museum of Art

Walter Anderson was a prolific and talented artist who worked in many different mediums. He designed and decorated pottery for his family's business, designed and built furniture, carved wood sculptures, illustrated books, painted with oils and watercolors, made linoleum blockprints, and created large wall murals. He was also eccentric, spending long periods of time on an uninhabited island that he accessed by rowboat and bicycling thousands of miles in Costa Rico and China where he sketched and journaled about the people, plants, and animals. 

 

After his death in 1965 a padlock was removed from the door to a small room in his Mississippi cottage to reveal walls covered with detailed murals portraying a day on the coast from sunrise to night fall. The room was removed piece by piece and reassembled in the museum. But the showpiece of the museum is the Ocean Springs Community House with murals covering all four walls, floor to ceiling. Anderson offered to paint the murals for just a dollar but the public wasn't enthusiastic about the project. Disheartened, Anderson quit painting in 1952. He would occasionally stop by the center and work on the murals but he never completely finished them. 

The museum is accessible. The Community Center doors are not opened so make sure to go the the museum entrance. The small sculpture garden is not accessible but it can be seen from the sidewalk.

The streets in Ocean Springs are narrow with overhanging branches. There isn't any parking for RVs on the main street or at the museum. We went south of the museum, turned east on Joseph Street, and parked in a long space in a side lot of the municipal services building. Museum  30.41092, -88.82756