The new American Civil War Museum (Photo by Penelope Carrington)
In her 11 years on the job, Christy Coleman, the female African-American CEO of the new American Civil War Museum and one of Time magazine’s “31 People Who Are Changing the South,” has never hesitated to wade into deep water.
“America is grappling with a racial and racist past that continues to plague it, whether it is symbols on the landscape, whether it is systemic or institutional issues — people are looking for the root cause of this chaos,” she says in a recent interview. “And I think we provide that.
“Because of karma or providence, the work we do has become more relevant in the way things have played out on the national and the political stage,” Coleman says.
In 2013, the Museum of the Confederacy and the American Civil War Center announced they were merging. On May 4, roughly six years later, the holdings of both institutions will be on display in a combined Civil War museum adjoining the James River, on the site of the historic Tredegar Iron Works, with ruins dating to the 1800s.
Coleman says the resulting museum will be marked by new research, as well as sometimes emotional and evocative exhibits that will invite visitors to look at the war from perspectives they may have never before considered.
The new American Civil War Museum, housed in a 29,000-square-foot, glass-enclosed edifice built at a cost of $25 million, has an avowed goal of becoming the preeminent center for the exploration of the Civil War and its legacies.
Rendering of a gallery exhibit (Photo courtesy American Civil War Museum)
The original plan had been for a larger 43,000-square-foot museum building, but Coleman says that building — “as beautiful and functional as it was” — ran into problems because it intruded into the flood plain of the James River, and lifting it out of the plain made the building obtrusive, changing the character of the historic ironworks that once provided cannons and munitions to the Confederacy.
Local architectural firm 3north handled the new design, and construction started in 2017.
Besides changing the design of the new museum in midstream, Coleman says officials had to contend with members who resisted the merger of the two museums.
Some attached to the Museum of the Confederacy were especially vocal and expressed their opposition publicly.
“We planned initially for a 40 percent drop in membership, and we ended up with 43 percent. But we have recovered most of that with new people,” Coleman says, adding that the museum has members throughout the U.S. who believe in its mission.
Today, the American Civil War Museum has cash reserves of $2 million and hopes to raise that to $5 million. The endowment is nearly $5 million, as well, Coleman says, and an energetic capital fundraising campaign continues.
The work we do has become more relevant in the way things have played out on the national and the political stage.” —Christy Coleman, CEO of the American Civil War Museum
To balance the steel and brick that provide the bones for the new museum building, an inviting and warm lobby will greet visitors with soft and comfortable furnishings.
Those visitors will pass through the ruined arch of the old Tredegar Iron Works to enter the museum, encountering other ruins as they proceed toward the museum’s galleries. A staircase leads to a second floor, where there will be space for temporary exhibits and an elevated view of the James River.
In telling the story of Civil War from multiple perspectives — Union, Confederate, enslaved and free, soldiers and civilians, Native Americans — Coleman says the museum wants people to understand their immediate connection to the war.
“We’re not talking about ancestral connection, necessarily, but rather as Americans,” she says. “It is a defining moment in our character and our promise and our failure.”
The museum says it hosts about 95,000 visitors annually at its three locations — including the White House of the Confederacy in Richmond and Appomattox.
Coleman emphasizes that the exhibits, the films, the artifacts, the manuscripts and everything that will soon bloom on the Tredegar site will palpably link the past to the present.
She puts it this way: “We’re never going to get right with each other until we get the history right.”