The Delta Blues Foundation is a 501c3 established to support the ongoing work of the Delta Blues Museum, Mississippi's first music museum.
The Delta Blues Museum (DBM) is not about an individual or an industry but rather about the men and women who created the unique musical art form known as the blues. We are in the final design stage of planning new permanent exhibits and need to raise $30,000 to complete this stage of our project. Since its beginnings in 1979, the DBM has been dedicated in its mission to create 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 DBM not only focuses on blues artists and their work but also promotes the blues by teaching this music to the next generation through our award-winning arts and education program.
In 2012, with assistance from the Mississippi Department of Transportation, the Mississippi Arts Commission and the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, the DBM added 7300 sq ft of new exhibit space to our gallery (see photo below) and since then has been working on plans for new permanent exhibits, which will fill our total gallery space (old and new) which is about 12,000 square feet.
We are now in the final design stage of this project and need funding to complete these plans so that we might debut the new exhibits in 2019, the museum's 40th anniversary. The
DBM received a National Medal for Museum and Library Service in 2013 during a ceremony with First Lady Michelle Obama in the East Wing of the White House. And our Arts and Education program received a National Arts & Humanities Youth Program Award in 2014.(see below)
The DBM has an impressive collection of artifacts that include instruments, recordings, performance outfits, original art and photography. We want to showcase these items and also bring them to life with interactive experiences so that we may share the stories of these important men and women and also provide a soundtrack for the visitor experience. WE will explore topics such as music from Africa to Mississippi; the Crossroads; Muddy's world, which will incorporate 1940's Clarksdale and Coahoma County recounting plantation life as well as adventures in the New World District. We will chronicle how blues gave birth to rock and roll, explore the blues revival and complete the experience with today's Clarksdale blues scene.
Please help us continue our work to honor these artists and their contributions and educate the next generation of blues musicians by donating to the Delta Blues Foundation today.
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