Start your visit to this North Carolina attraction with a brief staff orientation and a 10-minute orientation video. Then, explore the New South from the end of the Civil War to today through the museum’s permanent exhibit, Cotton Fields to Skyscrapers and other temporary exhibits. In the Museum Store you will find items unique to Charlotte, the region and the museum’s exhibits.
Cotton Fields to Skyscrapers: Charlotte and the Carolina Piedmont in the New South
Praised as one of the best exhibitions in the Southeast by the Southeastern Museums Conference Curator’s Committee in 2002, Cotton Fields to Skyscrapers: Charlotte and the Carolina Piedmont in the New South was unveiled with the museum’s reopening in 2001 after nearly six years of planning. It is an 8,000-sqaure-foot exhibit that presents Charlotte and its 13 surrounding counties as a case study to highlight the profound changes in the South since the Civil War. With more than 1,000 artifacts, images, video clips, music and oral histories, you can enjoy an interactive, hands-on experience as you journey through six different “environments” within the exhibit. Step into a one-room tenant farmers house. Run your fingers through a pile of seed cotton. Listen to the churning of a cotton mill. Join in a game of checkers on the front porch of an old mill house. Learn about what the first African-American hospitals in the South were like as you explore Good Samaritans Hospital Chapel. Stroll down an old main street and experience shopping in an early Belk department store. Sit down at a lunch counter and hear personal accounts from local sit-in leaders.
Shopping in the Museum Store
Be sure to stop by Levine Museum of the New South’s Museum Store, located just inside the front lobby. A selection of books related to Charlotte, the region and the museum’s exhibits are available to purchase. The Museum Store also offers a selection of jewelry, accessories, home décor and Charlotte souvenir items.
- While Levine Museum of the New South does not have lunch facilities on site, food services are available at several nearby restaurants. Be sure to ask Levine Museum of the New South staff for recommendations.
- The Levine Museum of the New South regularly features a number of temporary exhibits which support the museum’s centerpeice exhibit, Cotton Fields to Skyscrapers.
- The Levine Museum of the New South is ADA complaint.