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Levine Museum of the New South

The families portrayed on the previous three pages are included in a multipart, yearlong project recently launched by Levine Museum of the New South. Called Changing Places: From Black and White to Technicolor, the project chronicles how waves of newcomers are adapting to Charlotte's culture -- and how Charlotte's culture is adapting to them.  

More than two years in the making, Changing Places is the museum's largest and most ambitious undertaking to date. Pamela Grundy curated the exhibit that is at the core of the project. "We wanted very much to do an exhibit that would touch anybody who came, from someone who had been here a very short period of time and also someone who had lived here all their life," she says. "We wanted this to be an exhibit about how everybody was coping. And we wanted to do it through stories, because that's really what the museum does."

Grundy and Levine staff historian Tom Hanchett divided the exhibit into five themes, each dealing with a different challenge stemming from Charlotte's population growth. Each theme gets a section of the exhibit and a video of real people telling their stories. Visitors will have the chance to record their own video responses to the exhibit, and those responses will in turn be incorporated into the exhibit, creating an ongoing conversation.

The exhibit also has a Web component and monthly programming. For the duration of the project, UNC-Charlotte is holding a monthly speaker series on related issues, of which Charlotte magazine is a sponsor. March's topic is Growth and Sustainability. The talk takes place March 18 at the museum.
Levine Museum of the New South is located at 200 East Seventh Street. For more information, visit museumofthenewsouth.org.