The Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, attached to the Old Salem complex, is the only museum in the country dedicated specifically to the material culture of the early South. The collection covers furniture, ceramics, silver, textiles and paintings produced in the southern colonies and states from 1670 to 1860, and it is organised by region rather than by object type — so each gallery feels like the interior of a different house in a different place.
The level of scholarship is high and the captioning is exceptional. Even visitors who think they have no interest in decorative arts come out of MESDA having learned something specific about how slavery, geography and trade shaped what southern households actually looked like. Allow ninety minutes minimum.