All ages welcome; free for those in pirate costume or with Smithsonian Museum Day tickets, ticketed admission for the other landlubbers.
Celebrate the Mardi Gras Shipwreck exhibition with Capitol Park Museum and the Louisiana Office of Cultural Development – Division of Archaeology from 9am-3pm for a day of pirate-themed fun!

Museum Day is a annual one-day event in which participating museums and cultural institutions across the country provide free entry to anyone presenting a Museum Day ticket. Participants are allowed to download one ticket per email address. The ticket provides free general admission on Saturday, September 18, 2021, for two people.

The Museum Day theme this year is “Experience America.” With many public spaces being shut down for a year or more, Museum Day 2021 celebrates the reopening of museums after long closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This year’s theme, Experience America, represents the return to, and resurgence of, our country’s diverse cultural experiences, in the safest possible way.

www.smithsonianmag.com/museumday/venues/museum/capitol-park-museum

The Mardi Gras Shipwreck Exhibition

In 2007, a team of archaeologists and researchers mapped, recovered, and analyzed more than 1,000 artifacts from an underwater archaeological site in the Gulf of Mexico. While the artifacts and research indicate the ship sank in the early 1800s, the name of the ship and its crewmembers remain unknown. It’s referred to as the Mardi Gras Shipwreck for the pipeline where Okeanos Gas Gathering Company found it in 2002 while surveying the floor of the gulf about 35 miles off the coast in 4,000 feet of water.

The Mardi Gras Shipwreck exhibit features recovered artifacts that remained underwater for over 200 years and represents over a decade of collaborative research and conservation. Visit the exhibit to learn more about what researchers pieced together from the remains of this mysterious shipwreck!