If you really want to get to know a town down deep – its traditions and its roots – you’ve got to know what went into shaping it. Case-in-point: Charlotte, site of the 2012 Democratic National Convention this summer.
See these three museums and get a glimpse into the city’s southern soul:
The Levine Museum of the New South shows how this superstar southern city evolved after the Civil War. Cotton Fields to Skycrapers: Charlotte and the Carolina Piedmont in the New South puts inside a one-room tenant farmer’s house, runs your hand through a pile of cotton seed and sits you at a lunch counter eavesdrop on the personal accounts of sit-in leaders who sought to desegregate it. If there’s an exhibit anywhere in this country which better encapsulates the transformation of the southern soul, we haven’t seen it.
The Carolinas Aviation Museum is about more than airplanes. It’s about human progress. US Airways’ largest hub’s at nearby Charlotte-Douglas International Airport. It’s a jobs dynamo, one of the reasons people come to the region in the first place. See US Airways’ most famous flying machine, the fabled A320 which Captain “Sully” Sullenberger successfully ditched in the Hudson. May 25 through May 30 see some legitimate World War II warbirds – the planet’s only B-29 that’s still flying. It will be accompanied by a B-24 Liberator and a P-51 Mustang, one of the war’s hottest fighters.
The Mint Museum is in continual celebration of an eclectic variety of art. Through July 7 stop in and see Fairytales, Fantasy & Fear at the Mint Museum Uptown. This surrealistic exhibition aggregates work from the likes of Mattia Biagi, Mark Newport, Kako Price and others. The imagery is otherworldly, the ambience quite haunting.
Story by Jerry Chandler
(Image: jacreative)
