All Arts and History

Masquerade on Main In a town steeped in genuine history, Masquerade on Main offers something delightfully different—a chance to create your own alternate reality through the magic of creative photography. This isn’t a museum where you observe from a distance but rather an interactive experience where you become the star of your own imaginative photo shoot, surrounded by elaborately themed scenes that transport you to different worlds, eras, and fantasies. With nine meticulously crafted scenes ranging from old-timey nostalgia through steampunk invention to Day of the Dead mystique, visitors can pose in street clothes for $1, add creative props for $5, or fully transform through hundreds of costumes for men, women, and children for $20. The flexible appointment-based system accommodates your schedule, meaning you can often arrange visits at times working for your travel plans. Whether you’re exploring solo, celebrating with friends, capturing couple memories, or creating social media content, Masquerade on Main delivers what few tourist attractions offer—genuine permission to play pretend as an adult without judgment. Nine Distinctive Scenes: Worlds Within Ste. Genevieve Masquerade on Main features multiple meticulously crafted scenes, each designed to spark creativity and provide perfect backdrops for memorable photos. The old-timey scene evokes vintage Read more…

About the Museum Learning Center:  If you’re looking for something that will dazzle you to see in a small town, be sure to stop by the Museums Learning Center (otherwise known as the “Dinosaur Musuem.”  This place is one huge labor of love and a microcosm of what makes this community special.   Your adventure starts in the hall of giants, a room full of massive life-like dinosaur and other Cretaceous Period animal replicas.  Surrounding those are shadow boxes filled with actual fossils from different periods.  On the west end of the hall is a glassed-in room where live Archaeologists periodically work in front of visitors scrupulously chiseling away the clay around the bones of the Missouri dinosaur.  The next layer of exhibits centers around the fossils of that now-famed dinosaur and the current dig happening just south of Sainte Geneviève.  The entire upstairs moves more toward modern times and focuses on interesting collections from a variety of topics, from Civil War Battlefields, to the objects found buried in the outhouses that used to reside in the yards of early St. Louisans.  The story that you won’t get that makes this so impressive is the collections on display, and the dinosaur Read more…

Music Art Love – Where ChrisAlex Created a Gallery/Boutique/Venue/Living Room That Refuses to Fit Any Single Category At 137 North Main Street, ChrisAlex (Christine Alexander) has created something that defies conventional retail categorization—part art gallery featuring her signature GuitArt (mixed media collages on salvaged guitars), part boutique selling clothing and home décor, part music venue hosting open mics and concerts, part community living room where you can play house instruments, challenge someone to chess, bring in wine from neighboring establishments, read inspirational books, or just sit and absorb the eclectic creative energy. There’s a kids’ nook so families can browse while children stay entertained. Monthly events include open mic nights (welcoming musicians, poets, stand-up comedians, and all creative expression), music showcases, trivia nights, movie nights with personal introductions from ChrisAlex, art exhibits, presentations, and classes in art, acting, exercise, and improv. Founded in 2020, Music Art Love represents ChrisAlex’s vision of what a creative space can become when you reject the rigid boundaries between gallery, retail shop, performance venue, and community gathering place—creating instead a fluid, welcoming environment where visitors become participants, where browsing transforms into playing instruments or games, and where the line between performer and audience dissolves during Read more…

Old Mines Area Historical Society Keepers of the Last French Voice In unincorporated communities scattered across Washington County—hamlets bearing names like Old Mines, Potosi, Vieille Mine—situated inland from Ste. Genevieve, where St. Joachim’s Catholic Church anchors a community steeped in French heritage, a linguistic and cultural presence persists that most Americans never know exists: Missouri French, also called Paw Paw French, a dialect born nearly 300 years ago when French miners arrived to extract lead from Missouri earth, whose descendants continue speaking a language evolved through isolation, adaptation, and survival. The Old Mines Area Historical Society, founded in autumn 1977, dedicates itself to what might otherwise disappear entirely: documentation, celebration, and active preservation of this distinctly Missouri inheritance—ensuring that the voices of 18th-century settlers who named pawpaw trees, who crafted French words from frontier necessity, who built enduring community from remote landscape, continue speaking into futures that too easily forget. The Settlement: When French Miners Became Missourians Philippe François Renault arrived around 1720-1723, leading an expedition of artisans, laborers, and enslaved people from France through Santo Domingo and New Orleans, carrying expertise in identifying and extracting lead from the territory the French government had awarded him—part of the “Pays des Read more…

Pierre Menard Home The Louisiana Plantation Home in Southern Illinois Four miles north of Chester, Illinois, where a footpath connects to Fort Kaskaskia State Park and Mississippi River bottomlands stretch below a bluff, stands a French Creole mansion erected around 1802-1815 by a Québécois trader who arrived in the Illinois Country at fifteen and remained to become the first lieutenant governor of Illinois. The Pierre Menard Home—a two-and-a-half-story structure with hipped and dormered roof, wide wraparound galerie supported by sturdy square stone pillars, and proportions suggesting ease and established wealth—represents elegant frontier living at the moment when French colonial commerce was transforming into American territorial governance. Built by master carpenter Joseph Champaigne for Pierre Menard during those transformative early years of the 19th century, the house stands as rare surviving example of Louisiana-type plantation architecture constructed north of Louisiana, proof that French colonial building traditions persisted in the Illinois Country even as political authority shifted beneath them. The Man: From Fifteen-Year-Old Explorer to Lieutenant Governor Pierre Menard was born near Montreal, Quebec, on October 7, 1766—inheritor of French-Canadian identity in an era when French North America was rapidly becoming something else. At fifteen, he arrived in the Illinois Country as Read more…