Walter Anderson Museum of Art

Walter Inglis Anderson rowed alone to Horn Island — 12 miles offshore — to paint birds, waves, and storms that no one else saw. When he died in 1965, his family found a locked cottage with walls and ceiling covered in secret murals. The museum preserves the Little Room murals as he left them. You can stand in the space he painted for no audience. This is the coast's formative tension made visible: a place that has always faced the Gulf alone, that has rebuilt after Camille and Katrina, that knows what it means to endure weather no one inland will understand. Anderson's Horn Island journals, published posthumously, are among the most remarkable nature writings from the American South. His depictions of coastal plants, animals, landscapes, and people have placed him among the most singular artists of the 20th century. The museum connects Anderson's most public project — the 3,000 square-foot Ocean Springs Community Center murals — with his most private work, the Little Room. The community center murals are a separate free visit. Since 2016, Mississippi hill country blues artist Luther Dickinson has staged performances of music inspired by Anderson's Seven Climates of Ocean Springs murals at the community center. The museum is also dedicated to Anderson's brothers: Peter Anderson, potter and founder of Shearwater Pottery, and James McConnell Anderson, painter and ceramist. The Friends of Walter Anderson was chartered in 1974. The museum was dedicated on May 4, 1991. Open Tuesday through Saturday, 9:30am to 4:30pm. Admission charged.