Big changes - described in the Raleigh News & Observer's article, History museum charts a new path. I'm glad we spent a number of visits at the health and healing exhibit because it's gone. They have a new director who:
...gets restless when he strides through the galleries at the N.C. Museum of History.
History shouldn't be musty, he thinks. It should feel fresh.
Of course, a history museum has to preserve the past and educate the populace. But you have to get people's attention first.
History should be -- he'll go ahead and say it -- entertaining.
"We're in the entertainment business," said Howard, who officially becomes the museum's director today. "There are so many other things people can choose from."
Here are some of the plans:
First, he tore down the decade-old health exhibition. Then he made plans to create a decorative arts gallery, using the museum's large collection of textiles, pottery, silver and and other objects, which will open in August.
Next year, the gallery will expand to feature the early 19th-century works of Thomas Day, an African-American cabinet-maker from Caswell County. In May, Howard breathed new life into a dormant military history gallery, which this fall will expand and coordinate a program with UNC-TV on the new Ken Burns series about World War II.
He has embraced and expanded one of Buford's final projects. In October, the museum will open its first blockbuster exhibition, "Mysteries of the Lost Colony," which will be built around a collection of watercolors loaned from The British Museum.
"Lost Colony" will mark the first time the museum has charged admission, and Howard is counting on a lot of interest from the general public. Besides the paintings by colony governor John White, the exhibition will incorporate aspects of "The Lost Colony" outdoor drama, include an Algonquin Indian village and offer what Howard calls a "C.S.I."-type exhibit, in which visitors sift through clues and try to determine what could have happened to the settlers who disappeared.
Howard said $1 million will have to be raised to cover the loan from The British Museum. That's in addition to several hundred thousand dollars being raised for the decorative arts gallery.
The final challenge is still ahead. Next year, Howard hopes to push through the signature exhibition that has been planned since the museum moved into its current building in 1994: a chronology exhibition that would trace the state's own history for the first time. At more than 19,000 square feet, it would be the museum's largest exhibition ever, taking up most of the first floor.
If the money comes through, the first phase, covering pre-history to 1850, would open a year from now, and the second phase, 1850 to the present, in December 2008. Howard said $6 million in state money is proposed, and the rest would have to come from donors.