LSU Rural Life Museum

The LSU Rural Life Museum is a museum of Louisiana history in Baton Rouge, USA. It is located on the Burden Plantation, a 40-acre (160,000 m2) agricultural research experiment station. As a state with a diverse cultural ancestry, Louisiana has natives of French, Spanish, Native American, German, African, Acadian, and Anglo American heritage.

The Rural Life Museum commemorates the contributions made by its various cultural groups through interpretive programs and events throughout the year, and is divided into three areas.

  • The Barn houses numerous artifacts from the 19th century that were utilized in the common life rituals of individuals in rural regions of the state. There is a large collection of farming equipment, tools, furnishings and utensils.
  • The Working Plantation is designed to replicate life during the 19th century with authentic furnishings and day-to-day activities. The complex buildings include a commissary, overseer's house, kitchen, slave cabins, sick house, schoolhouse, blacksmith shop, sugar house, and grist mill.
  • The Louisiana Folk Architecture exhibits many buildings that are reflective of the state’s early settlers' construction styles. The structures include a country church, pioneer's cabin, Carolina cabin, shotgun house, Acadian house, and dogtrot house.

Windrush gardens and a gift shop are on the grounds and open year round except for major holidays. Guided tours are available, but should be booked in advance if it is a group of ten or more.

Famous quotes containing the words rural, life and/or museum:

    “What life is best?
    Courts are but only superficial schools
    To dandle fools:
    The rural parts are turned into a den
    Of savage men:
    And where ‘s a city from all vice so free,
    But may be termed the worst of all the three?”
    —Francis Bacon (1561–1626)

    “There is no going back,
    For standing still means death, and life is moving on,
    Moving on towards death. But sometimes standing still is also life.”
    —John Ashbery (b. 1927)

    “A fallen tree does not rise again.”
    —Hawaiian saying no. 2412, ‘lelo No’Eau, collected, translated, and annotated by Mary Kawena Pukui, Bishop Museum Press, Hawaii (1983)