To move forward and make the city a better place for everyone, we must look back and learn from choices made in the past.  

Charlotte: Moving Forward, Looking Back tells the story of Charlotte from Native and early European settlement to today. The exhibition combines stories of people, places, and events in a foundational narrative of Charlotte history that answers thought-provoking questions about how we got here and where we are headed. Experience Charlotte stories through objects from the Levine Museum’s collections, interactive media displays, and art by local creatives. 

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Charlotte Revealed explores some of the stories featured in the Charlotte: Moving Forward, Looking Back in more depth. Learn more about Charlotte’s Gold Rush, the New South, and more here.

 

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The exhibition examines Charlotte through four big questions: 

• How did Charlotte grow from a trading village to an urban financial center?  
• How have inequality and resistance shaped Charlotte?   
• How is Charlotte becoming a more multicultural city?  
• What does it mean to be a New South city? 

Explore the different stories that, together, create our city. Plan your visit today!

A full Spanish translation guide is available onsite during your visit.

Una guía completa traducida al español está disponible en el museo durante su visita.

As part of The Duke Endowment’s yearlong centennial celebration, the Endowment is touring a traveling exhibit throughout North Carolina and South Carolina to educate and engage the public about the vision of its founder, James B. Duke, and a century of progress he made possible.

Through interactive content panels and digital experiences, visitors learn how Mr. Duke and The Duke Endowment helped shape the Carolinas and how Mr. Duke’s generosity continues to support the region today. It also features stories of the Endowment’s grantees through the years. 

The exhibit was created through a collaboration between The Duke Endowment and Conner Prairie—a leader in creating innovative and engaging museum experiences. For more information, please visit dukeendowment.org

States of Incarceration is a national traveling multimedia exhibition that delves into the history of incarceration by focusing on human stories from over 30 different local communities across the U.S., including Charlotte, North Carolina.

The exhibition is the culmination of efforts by over 800 university students, faculty, formerly incarcerated individuals, and others deeply affected by incarceration. For its Charlotte debut, the exhibition features content created by history students and faculty at Johnson C. Smith University exploring links between foster care and incarceration for local youth.

Today, the United States incarcerates more of its citizens than any other country in the world. Together, the community stories in States of Incarceration are intended to foster new public dialogue on this critical and timely social issue.

Learn more about this traveling exhibition and the work of Humanities Action Lab by visiting their website.

Donate To Our Book Drive

As an initiative supporting this exhibition, we are participating in a book drive in partnership with the Prison Books Collective from Nov. 7 – Jan. 31, 2024.

We invite you to donate new or gently used paperback books to those incarcerated in North Carolina and Alabama. Your book donation will decrease the isolation of incarcerated people through learning and storytelling, give them a sense of connection to the world, and provide resources to those not often thought of. To learn more about the book drive and how you can participate, click here.

Levine Museum of the New South’s latest exhibit, Lumbee Indians: A People and a Place, explores Lumbee people and culture in portraiture.

Curated by Nancy Strickland Fields, Director of UNC Pembroke’s Museum of the Southeast American Indian, this visual narrative of the Lumbee tells a history and experience of family and home, land and water, faith, and memory.

#HomeCLT is an exhibit series rooted in the stories of Charlotte’s neighborhoods. #HomeCLT aims to show the city in the words of its diverse residents, to reveal the unexpected, to prompt reflection and dialogue, and to inspire civic participation as Charlotte strives to build a more equitable future.

The first iteration of #HomeCLT includes the stories of the Eastland Mall, Enderly Park, Hidden Valley, Dilworth, and Sedgefield neighborhoods. Through an Augmented Reality app developed by Dr. Ming-Chun Lee of UNC Charlotte’s College of Arts and Architecture, visitors will “see” the demographic changes in these neighborhoods occur over time as visuals and graphics are projected on their phones and other devices.

The exhibit includes a video recording booth where visitors can tell their own stories of the neighborhoods they have shaped and that have shaped them. It also features work by Charlotte photographer, Alvin C. Jacobs, Jr., and videographer, David Butler, and is made possible by generous support from lead sponsor, Crescent Communities.

It Happened Here builds on the Equal Justice Initiative’s research into the history of lynching across America, situating Mecklenburg County’s two recorded lynchings and the local effort to memorialize the victims within the national conversation.

The exhibit also features “AN OUTRAGE,” a documentary filmed on location at lynching sites in six states and bolstered by the memories and perspectives of descendants, community activists, and scholars.

Levine Museum of the New South goes to Brooklyn, adding this rich historic neighborhood to its current exhibit #HomeCLT: People. Places. Promises – a multilayered exhibit that explores Charlotte’s neighborhoods as they’ve grown and changed over time through Augmented Reality experiences that bring the stories alive.

Brooklyn: Once a City Within a City, explores the rise and demise of Charlotte’s Brooklyn neighborhood, once the most thriving and vibrant Black community in the Carolinas.

Brooklyn gives voice to the memories of former residents and community members. The exhibit encourages reflection about a place that provided opportunities and sanctuary for African Americans and explores the consequences of urban renewal and what a community may lose in the name of progress and growth. Visitors will also learn about the politics that further segregated the city and deepened the economic opportunity gap that Charlotte continues to struggle with today.

Learn more about Charlotte’s Brooklyn neighborhood, on foot, with an immersive GPS-based experience.

The international exhibition, Anne Frank: A History for Today, tells the story of Anne Frank against the background of the Holocaust and World War II. The exhibit traces Anne’s family history, their experience in hiding during the war, and the legacy Anne left behind through her diary. Local students trained as docents will facilitate conversations about the lessons of this history and what they mean for us today.

Anne Frank: A History for Today is a partnership between Levine Museum of the New South and the Stan Greenspon Holocaust and Social Justice Education Center’s Pop-Up History initiative. The exhibit was developed by the Anne Frank Center at the University of South Carolina.

Including more than 1,000 artifacts, images, video clips, music, and oral histories, Cotton Fields to Skyscrapers: Reinventing Charlotte and the Carolina Piedmont in the New South uses Charlotte and its 13 surrounding counties as a case study to illustrate the profound changes in the South since the Civil War.

Visitors tour many different “environments” within the exhibit for learning experiences about:

• Life in a one-room tenant farmer’s house
• Seed cotton
• Machines on the floor of the cotton mill
• Life in a mill house
• Good Samaritans Hospital Chapel, one of the first African American hospitals in the South
• Main street with stores
• Personal accounts from local sit-in leaders at a lunch counter

 

Reserve a Virtual Tour

Men of Change: Power. Triumph. Truth. profiles revolutionary men—including Muhammad Ali, James Baldwin, Ta-Nehisi Coates, W.E.B Du Bois, and Kendrick Lamar—whose journeys have altered the history and culture of the country. While these men made their mark in a variety of disciplines—politics, sports, science, entertainment, business, religion, and more—all understood the value of asserting their own agency by owning their own stories. The achievements of the men are woven within the legacy and traditions of the African American journey—achievements of excellence despite society’s barriers.

Twenty-five contemporary artists were invited to reflect and celebrate the significance of these ground-breaking individuals through their own creative vision. These works of art serve as counterpoint to the sumptuously backlit photographs and inspiring quotes and together honor the truth of the African American experience in history and today.

Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Arts + Culture and Levine Museum of the New South are proud to collaborate and bring the dynamic exhibition Men of Change: Power. Triumph. Truth., created by the Smithsonian, to our Charlotte community.

Men of Change was developed by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and made possible through the generous support of the Ford Motor Company Fund.

Free admission to the Men of Change Exhibition at Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Arts + Culture and Levine Museum of the New South was made possible by generous support from Wells Fargo.