The Charleston Museum kicks off its natural history fundraising campaign
September 10, 2015
CHARLESTON, SC – The Charleston Museum announced the upcoming renovation of its Natural History Gallery, scheduled for implementation in mid-2017. The Museum’s fundraising campaign for this project will officially kick off on October 1, 2015, with a special invitation-only event at the Museum.
A key objective of the Museum’s recently adopted Strategic Plan, the new gallery will present a visually compelling display of indigenous fossils and specimens that tell the story of Lowcountry natural history. The gallery will offer an unparalleled learning experience focusing on the Lowcountry’s prehistoric and contemporary biodiversity, the significant geologic changes that have taken place here over time, and humans’ impact on the local environment and their curiosity about the world. It will be the Museum’s most sizeable exhibition space and promises to be an excellent resource for area schools.
The Museum’s collections contain the largest existing assemblage of South Carolina natural history fossils and specimens known, and many parts of the collection have national and even international importance. Among the collection highlights to be featured in the new gallery are a cast of Pelagornis sandersi, the now extinct, largest ever known bird capable of flight, 23-33 million year old Oligocene era whale fossils, the skeleton of an 18′ crocodile that inhabited the Lowcountry nearly 30 million years ago, fossilized botany specimens that are at least 280 million years old, mounts of a variety of Lowcountry birds, including bald eagles, hawks, herons, egrets, owls and extinct species such as the Carolina parakeet, ivory-billed woodpecker and passenger pigeon, and mounts of large mammals no longer extant in the Lowcountry such as cougar and elk. The artwork of Charlestonian Maria Martin Bachman, who assisted John Audubon with botanical and insect renderings, will also be on display.
The budget for the Natural History Gallery project is $887,000. The Museum has resources in hand or commitments for over half of this amount, and will raise the remainder through a dedicated fundraising campaign.
About The Charleston Museum
A 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, The Charleston Museum, founded in 1773, is America’s first museum. Holding the most extensive collection of South Carolina cultural and scientific materials in the nation, it also owns two National Historic Landmark houses, the Heyward-Washington House (1772) and the Joseph Manigault House (1803), as well as the Dill Sanctuary, a 580-acre wildlife preserve.
