Forging its own future: dedicated metalsmiths help a Memphis museum revive a lost American art form.(POINTS OF INTEREST)(National Ornamental Metal Museum)

Publication: Smithsonian

Publication Date: 01-MAY-06

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COPYRIGHT 2006 Smithsonian Institution

FROM THE GAZEBO at the National Ornamental Metal Museum, high on a bluff south of downtown Memphis, the world resembles nothing so much as a mural by Thomas Hart Benton. Day and night, barges steer through a wide bend of the Mississippi, while freight trains and Interstate 55 traffic rattle the steel truss bridges to and from Arkansas. The gazebo is a nice spot for a sunset wedding or a glass of whiskey after a day pounding steel.

Forged-steel gates, painted black with gold-leaf trim and dappled with hundreds of rosettes, open to the museum grounds, a riverside oasis shaded by century-old oak trees and strewn with sculpture, some of it peculiar--a metal yellow flower, eight feet tall; a cast-aluminum lion holding out a paw; and a green-and-yellow fence piece shaped like a row of cornstalks.

The gallery, which is inside a 1930s brick building with a white...

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