Museum of the Southwest

A cultural complex on West Missouri Avenue anchored by the 1934 Turner Mansion, the Museum of the Southwest houses an art museum, children's museum, planetarium, and sculpture garden on a single campus. The art collection focuses on American Southwest and Taos school paintings, with some strong examples of the regional tradition.

The planetarium runs public shows on a regular schedule and is genuinely good — it was designed with serious astronomical equipment, not just as a tourist attraction. The children's museum section makes the complex a practical option for families passing through. The sculpture garden is pleasant on a clear day, which in West Texas is most days.

1705 W Missouri Avenue, Midland, TX 79701. Tuesday–Saturday 10am–5pm, Sunday 2–5pm.

things to do museum
A story
The museum's centrepiece is the 1934 Turner Mansion, a 12,000-square-foot Spanish Colonial Revival house built by an oil family at the height of the Permian Basin boom. The mansion was donated to the museum in 1965, along with its original furnishings. Walking through rooms designed for oil-money entertaining in 1930s West Texas — the scale, the materials, the ambition of it — gives a vivid sense of what the first oil boom felt like in this improbable landscape.

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