Confusion over a beloved MS Coast museum’s fate goes ‘small town viral.’ Why?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Bay St. Louis officials reconsider leases for nonprofits in city-owned spaces.
- Alice Moseley museum’s uncertain lease status raises concerns about its future.
- Council plans to address leases after finalizing city budget.
Ocean Springs can claim renowned artist Walter Anderson. Biloxi has a museum dedicated to ceramicist George Ohr.
And Bay St. Louis boasts folk artist Alice Moseley – for now.
Renewed Amtrak service and a Bay St. Louis City Council with four new members have thrown into question whether the Alice Moseley Folk Art Museum will remain in the Historic L&N Train Depot, a city-owned building.
Council members say they are not against leasing to the Moseley museum. But they want more information about the finances of all nonprofit organizations, including the museum and Hancock County Chamber of Commerce, that are housed in city buildings.
City leaders plan to review financial statements and other records of nonprofit tenants and offer new leases in the coming weeks. But artists and residents who adore Moseley fear the council is seeing dollar signs now that Amtrak is running again, and wants to turn over community space in the depot to retailers or other merchants.
Mayor Mike Favre insists that’s not the case. He said the council and administration need to focus on a city budget for the coming year, then will take a look at the leases.
All the talk of retail and booting the Moseley museum from the historic depot, the mayor said, is just “drama.”
“Not one council person has ever said, ‘Hey, we want to kick them out and bring retail in there,’ ” Favre said. “Is that an option? Sure. There’s all kinds of options, if that’s what they choose to do.”
Supporters defend museum
The museum and other city tenants have been operating on a month-to-month basis because their old leases expired at the end of June.
McKenzey Northington, the museum’s director, said a month-to-month lease makes it harder to apply for long-term grants that could help renovate the building, arrange art classes or schedule school trips.
“Right now,” she said, “we can’t really plan for the future.”
The museum was founded after Moseley’s death in 2004. The cobalt blue cottage where she painted, welcomed visitors and spent the last years of her life sits just across from the depot. Her son, who has since died, sold the house, which has fallen into disrepair.
Moseley enjoyed watching passengers come and go from the depot when Amtrak previously stopped in Bay St. Louis. She even incorporated the depot into some of her paintings. Dozens of the artist’s original acrylic paintings are displayed in the museum.
Moseley, a former English teacher, began painting late in life and chronicled her childhood memories in the South. “I only paint what I feel and what I know,” she says in a video that plays for museum visitors. “Many of the things I paint are not in our culture anymore – they’re gone.”
Martha Whitney Butler, who owns The French Potager shop in Old Town, moved to Bay St. Louis to run the museum when it was in Moseley’s house. Butler has a degree in art history and an affinity for Southern folk art.
Butler thinks the combination of the Moseley museum, Mardi Gras Museum and Visitors Center in the depot offers visitors a glimpse into the quirky, artistic culture that is Bay St. Louis.
“It absolutely benefits the city to promote her legacy,” Butler said.
Artists and museum supporters reacted with alarm when the council in August rejected two options for leases that Northington presented. Northington said the issue went “small-town viral.”
“It has created a stir,” Councilman Kyle Lewis said. “A lot of people don’t want to see Alice Moseley go.”
Bay leaders weigh options
Other city leaders described the issue as largely blown out of proportion.
Favre said Amtrak’s ridership does not seem large enough to support a restaurant in the depot building. Amtrak’s Mardi Gras line holds about 135 passengers and stops in four Mississippi Coast cities, including Bay St. Louis.
City leaders say the problem began when Northington presented two lease proposals this summer. Council members said the city, not the museum, should have drafted the lease.
Council members also stressed that they are not against the museum, which spends $150 a month on utilities and pays no rent. But they also said they must understand how much the city is donating. Northington estimated the museum gets between 500 and 800 visitors each month.
Councilman Josh DeSalvo said some council members felt pressured when the museum brought the city two lease proposals. “Some people love the museum,” he said. “Some people have different things they’re passionate about. So how do we, as a council, figure out what’s most important?”
What’s next?
City leaders say they plan to set public workshops to sort out leases once they receive the financial information they requested.
The city will then draft leases and offer them to tenants.
Councilman Lewis wants to make sure the Hancock County Chamber of Commerce is held to the same standards as the Moseley museum. If the council wants to request proposals for its leased space, he said, the chamber should have to present one for the old City Hall, too.
The chamber signed a lease on the building in 2022, paying $750 a month in rent. The chamber also manages the space downstairs, where nonprofit groups meet.
The city’s attorney, Heather Ladner Smith, also happens to be president of the Hancock County chamber. Smith was the chamber’s vice president when she drafted the chamber’s 2022 lease from a template created by the previous city attorney, she said. To avoid any controversy, she said that she will likely ask that someone else work on any new chamber lease.
Councilman Jordan Bradford said he wants consistency across the nonprofit tenant leases and expects the city’s offer to the museum will be reasonable.
Northington, who started as the museum’s executive director in June, said she wants to work with the city and hopes the council will waive the museum’s rental fee. “I hate that we’re in the middle of this tiff,” she said.
“If it’s too high of a rent and we can’t swing it,” she added, “we might need to look somewhere else.”
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This story was originally published September 3, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
