Pink Palace Mansion 3.0

Plans are moving ahead for our renovation of the Pink Palace mansion. The Mansion was built in the 1920s and has undergone a series of re-imaginings in its long life. It started as Clarence Saunders’ palatial home that was meant to be a Southern showplace. Saunders lost his house before it was completed, and it was deeded to the City of Memphis to be used as a museum. The Memphis Museum of Natural History and Industrial Artsopened in 1930 with exhibits throughout the rooms. The early museum directors lived in the mansion, and by the 1970s offices, education classrooms, live animals, exhibits and collections storage crowded the space. The mansion closed to the public when the new exhibition building opened in the late 1970s. It reopened in the 1990s with exhibits about the changing roles of women, Cotton Carnival, Memphis immigrants and museum treasures.

Earlier this month the…