American
Civil War Museum
The Power of Personal Connection
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power of place
Built within the ruins of the historic Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, Virginia, the American Civil War Museum is a visitor experience that lives in the heart of the story.
Project Details
Client
American Civil War Museum
Location
Richmond, Virginia
Size
6,000 square feet
Services
Planning
Media
Design
Fabrication
Installation
A Story of Personal Connections
The American Civil War Museum reframes the highly complex and emotional story of this nation-shaping conflict that tore the nation in two. The award-winning museum reveals the epic sweep of events that fractured the nation through the first-person wartime narratives of real soldiers, civilians, politicians, and African Americans, both enslaved and free, to create intimate moments of connection, while challenging broad myths, for a contemporary audience.
emotional engagement
The Civil War is a challenging story to tell. Our team mapped the storytelling arc to maximize the impact by carefully pacing the flow throughout the museum allowing visitors to experience complex and intense narratives and stories with periodic relief in moments of rest and reflection. As we mapped the experience throughout the floor plan, we layered the “heated” emotionally impactful moments in with didactic engagement.
Unique Design Approach
Working in close partnership with Museum staff and scholars, we developed themes tied to interpretive core goals and developed a highly successful blend of interactive and immersive media, artifacts, consistent graphic hierarchies, and personal narratives from all ethnicities, genders, and economic statuses to deliver universally relevant content that invites reflection and transformative moments.
Related Projects
As a result of our successful partnership, we were engaged to create two complemtary exhibits. Greenback America focuses on how the use of paper currency transformed the relationship between government, the economy, banks, and citizens. Southern Ambitions focuses on the global implications of the Confederacy winning the Civil War. We recently completed an immersive, orientation film for the Robins Theater, A People’s Contest: America’s Civil War & Emancipation.
Awards & Recognition
The American Civil War Museum received the Excellence in Exhibition recognition for Story Telling Supported by Collections from the American Alliance of Museums in 2020.
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