The LSU Rural Life Museum is an outdoor museum on the grounds of the old Burden Research Plantation, south of the main campus. The complex preserves a collection of structures representing Louisiana's pre-industrial agricultural world: a working plantation with overseer's house, slave cabins, a commissary, a sugar-processing barn, and a grist mill.
The indoor museum building holds an extensive collection of tools, equipment, household goods, and folk art reflecting everyday life in rural Louisiana from the colonial era through the early 20th century. The collection includes significant material on Cajun and Creole domestic life, African American material culture, and the specific technologies of sugar and cotton farming. The outdoor grounds are free to wander during daylight hours; the museum buildings have a small admission charge.