Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, Art museum in Laurel, Mississippi, United States

The Lauren Rogers Museum of Art is a Georgian Revival building of local red brick with Indiana limestone trim and a slate roof, designed by New Orleans architect Rathbone DeBuys. Its front has a portico with six white columns on low steps, a recessed dark door under a curved fanlight, and round-arched recesses in the brick to the right. Inside are galleries for American and European art, Native American basketry, British Georgian silver, and Japanese ukiyo-e prints.

The museum opened in 1923 as a memorial to Lauren Eastman Rogers, who died at age 23, and was the first art institution of its kind in Mississippi. His family and supporters founded it to bring access to art in a part of the country where such institutions were rare.

The Native American basket collection began with a gift from Lauren Rogers's great-aunt, Catherine Marshall Gardiner, when the museum opened in 1923. It is shown alongside American and European paintings, British Georgian silver and Japanese ukiyo-e prints, and the museum also keeps a library of more than 10,000 volumes on art and regional history.

The museum sits in downtown Laurel and is easy to reach on foot from the town center. Allow more time than you might expect, as the collection is larger than the building suggests from the outside.

The museum's lower-level galleries, now used for temporary and traveling exhibitions, originally housed the public library for Laurel and Jones County until 1978. Since its founding the museum has presented more than 800 temporary and traveling exhibitions, including works by Pablo Picasso, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Norman Rockwell.