Levine Museum of the New South, Charlotte, NC

The Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte North Carolina is a place residents and visitors can explore the history of the Carolina Piedmont area. The museum preserves and collects several objects that have been a part of the North Carolina history. The goal of the museum is education. The name of the museum may seem a little strange for anyone who has not lived in the south. "New South'' means the time after the Civil War or the War Between the States. Artifacts in the museum will date from 1865 to the present. Levine Museum provides a history museum in which patrons can engage in the history.

The Civil War was more than a fight to end slavery. It was also a way to reach further in economics, politics, and culture. The South had to reinvent themselves since it was the southern states that still had slavery. The war changed how societies interacted and how new individuals were accepted. Change in the south took a long time, even after the war. Through the museum an attendee can see the gradual change, the effects it had, and how different races began to interact.

Museum Admission and Hours:

The museum is open 7 days a week. Monday through Saturday hours are 10am to 5pm. Sundays the museum opens at noon and closes at 5pm. The museum is closed for all major holidays.

Admission for adults is $6.00. Children and seniors are $5.00. For a group of individuals the museum charges $4.00. A family can enter the premises for $17.00.

Exhibits:

Their permanent exhibit is the Cotton Fields to Skyscrapers. This exhibit showcases the southern movement from plantations to larger financial businesses. Plantations in the south were the main means of survival. Plantations were for growing cotton, crops, and tobacco. While they certainly had empires of businesses, the financial centers in the south were nothing like what New York City was becoming. Today Charlotte as well as other major southern cities are financial powerhouses. The Levine Museum allows a patron to see this.

There are two temporary exhibits at the museum: Changing Places and Standing on a Box. The Changing Places exhibit will be showcased for a year, ending in 2010. Standing on a Box is only at the museum for 3 months. The exhibit will leave in June 2009. Changing Places is based on the New South as it is today. The display discusses the growth of Charlotte North Carolina as one of the top places to live. Individuals from New York, Mexico, Bosnia, Vietnam, and other places have moved into Charlotte in the last nineteen years. It is about the blending of cultures. The South has been catalogued as an isolated area in the US, yet that is changing now.

Standing on a Box is a different style of display. It is based on Lewis Hine, a photographer, who obtained photographs of children working in textile mills. The images created a controversy and helped change child labor laws.