The Madison History Museum
Permanent Exhibitions are included with Museum Admission Fee.
1895 Schoolroom Exhibition
The completely restored and furnished 1895 Schoolroom Exhibition highlights original desks, slate blackboards and other period accessories. Regional and home school groups regularly tour with special interest in the schoolroom. The 1895 Schoolroom Exhibition preserves a living sense of history for present and future generations.
Arts & Crafts Gallery
The Arts and Crafts Gallery houses a gallery of original furnishings from the Arts and Crafts Period. The wallpaper, printed form the original woodblocks of the William Morris studios in England, is an appropriate backdrop for the furniture from the American workshops of Gustav Stickley and Charles Limbert. Pottery, lamps, metalware and other decorative pieces are exhibited on a rotating basis. The entire collection combines to capture the essence of the international revolution in the decorative arts of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the same era as The Center's building. The individual pieces reaffirm the goal of the movement which raised the status of craftsman to that of artist.
Museum of Madison & Morgan County
The objects and information presented in this Museum are local objects and papers that are arranged to convey a sense of the area's development prior to 1900 — the land, the people who settled it, and how they lived. The museum features selected artifacts of the area, including those of Native Americans of the pre-Columbian era and the period of European settlement through the 19th Century.
Displays, notably of tools, clothing, home furnishings, household goods, uniforms, letters, authentic arms from the Civil War, and an old-time cotton gin give the visitor a brief story of this area of the South. A new addition to the museum is a history wall giving highlights and turning points of Madison and Morgan County during the first 100 years. Part of time-line includes an architectural history of Madison house styles during the 19th century. The Museum of Madison and Morgan County has been created to not only share the rich history of our town and county, but also for the enjoyment of visitors of all ages.
George Andrews: The Dot Man
In 2019 Nene Humphrey, widow of Benny Andrews on behalf of the Andrews-Humphrey Family Foundation bequeathed 11 portraits by George Andrews to the Madison-Morgan Cultural Center. This collection is displayed on the second floor of the Cultural Center. ⠀
George Andrews is the patriarch of a highly creative family of artists and writers, a family richly blessed with talent and deeply rooted in the soil of rural Georgia. By choice, the former sharecropper, father of ten, and lifelong artist never traveled outside Georgia's boundaries.
When his family moved from rural Plainview, Georgia to Atlanta in the 1950's, George relocated to Madison and became a sign painter for the City of Madison, where he spent the rest of his life. His passion for painting was evidenced in the brightly colored dot-filled rocks that soon began showing up around town. Adorning rocks, furniture, women's shoes and "anything that did not move," with bold, colorful dots, he became known as "The Dot Man".
The works in this collection painted between 1989 and 1991, depict members of the Andrews family spanning three generations.
Columns and Cottages: Madison’s Architectural Treasures
Columns and Cottages introduces Madison’s architectural heritage. The town’s founding, growth, and development are in many ways typical both for the South and throughout the United States. The build environment reflects this history. What makes Madison unique among historic districts is the large representation of architectural styles spanning the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.