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American Civil War Museum

A museum exhibit focuses on an interactive touch screen in the middle of the scene with a burlap cloth running from below the screen to the ceiling, representing a scroll of paper, with the text "Civil War Begins 1861" and an image of a historical figure on the screen. To the left is a cabin featuring wood pieces accompanied with painted slats of the american flag. To the right is a large case featuring layers of artifacts, texts, and graphics.

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

7,000 square feet

Industry

Museums & Cultural Institutions

Scope of Work

Interpretive Master Plan
Design
Media
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. 

Building this new museum is about building a new ideology about how we do history. It’s a celebration of the legacies that each of us brings to the table, but pivoting it for new audiences who are asking a whole new set of amazing questions.
- Christy Coleman, Former CEO, American Civil War Museum

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.

Architectural photography by ©Brian Rodgers Jr. – Digital Art That Rocks™ 

Directly in the center is a painting of "The Last Cause" featuring two men on horseback framed in gold with elegant designs on the corners. To the left of the painting is large graphics and text on the wall, with the legible words reading "14th Amendment, Citizenship Guaranteed". To the right is another wall of text and graphics reading "15th Amendment, Voting Rights Granted".

Project Recognition

Awards

Excellence in Exhibition recognition for Storytelling Supported by Collections | American Alliance of Museums | 2020

Bronze Telly Awards | Non-Broadcast History + Museums & Galleries | 2020

Exhibition Competition Silver Award | SEMC | 2019

Publications

Emotional Mapping & The Power of Spacial Storytelling | Legacy Magazine | 2025

Effective Exhibitions Should Make Lasting Connections | Exhibition Journal | 2022

News

The New York Times
Smithsonian Magazine
The Washington Post

Related Projects

Following the success of this project, we were engaged to create two complementary temporary exhibits: Greenback America, exploring how paper currency reshaped the relationship between government, banks, the economy, and citizens; and Southern Ambitions, examining the global implications of a Confederate victory in the Civil War. We also produced the immersive orientation film A People’s Contest: America’s Civil War & Emancipation for the Robins Theater.

A sketch-style render illustrates a lobby area with a staircase to the left and a glass door in the center. Hanging from the walls and ceiling surrounding the entrance are multidimensional shapes with scenes, people, and written documents collaged together.
A museum exhibit focuses on an interactive touch screen in the middle of the scene with a burlap cloth running from below the screen to the ceiling, representing a scroll of paper, with the text "Civil War Begins 1861" and an image of a historical figure on the screen. To the left is a cabin featuring wood pieces accompanied with painted slats of the american flag. To the right is a large case featuring layers of artifacts, texts, and graphics.
A team of two men are working to build a replica cabin. The cabin features natural wood, light panel slats on the outside ending in various lengths, and an american flag visual on the upper inside triangle of the cabin. Sitting inside the cabin is a ladder and scaffolding directly to the left.
Starting at the left of the exhibit is a replica cabin built from natural wood featuring shattered pieces as the cabin was cut in half. Within the cabin is a large map from the Civil War era. In the center of the scene is an inset case featuring artifacts left behind on the battlefield. In the background and towards the right side of the scene is casework spanning the wall featuring layers of artifacts, text, and graphics.
Within a glass case there are layers of artifacts, graphics, and text. Text elements read "Build a War Machine", "To Arms!" and more paragraph long copy.
A digital render of a young boy wearing a backpack shows him looking towards an artifact interactive. The interactive features two layers of multiple small artifacts arranged side-by-side along long glass cases. In the center of both cases is a magnifine glass that moves between the artifacts.
A glass casework spans the scene featuring layers of text, graphics, and artifacts. In the center is a panel in front of the casework reading "Lincoln's Bold Strategy" and more text down the panel.
A man is seen studying a large scale media projection directly in front of him. The projection takes up the whole image, projected on a burlap material, it reads "colored men wanted!".
A long and low glass case holds artifacts of rusted chains, written documents, a shoe, rope, and a basket from the Civil War era with descriptions below. In the back of the case is a graphic and text reading "no more slavery chains for me, many thousands gone".
A scene within a museum exhibit features many different elements. A main feature is a projected media piece hanging from the ceiling featuring a mans face and an American flag. To the right is half of a natural wood cabin with a large map framed in the middle. In the center of the scene is an inset case featuring artifacts left behind during the Civil War. There are surrounding cases with other artifacts, information, and materials.
A multi-dimensional sketch of a media piece visualizes tringles arranged and overlapping as if they were a crushed piece of paper. Each triangle is filled differently, with some solid colors, while others are scenes, people, and written documents from the civil war era. In the foreground, four line-work sillouettes are looking towards the media piece.
A large multidimensional projection surface is being constructed in a fabrication shop. A man is kneeling on the ground below the project with a yardstick.
A theater space features a large multidimensional projection screen made up of many overlapping shapes. Projected on the pieces is various different scenes from the Civil War era from battle, leadership meetings, to maps with text indicating the when and where each took place.
A computer screen in the center displays a video editor platform with a projection preview and the projection of an african american woman in a non-geometric shape is displayed in the background.
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800 S. 5th Street
Louisville, KY 40203
(502) 562-0060

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