From our friends at MUSE Winston-Salem:
We have some very special news to share with you today. We have a NEW NAME and a NEW HOME!
Today, New Winston Museum becomes MUSE Winston-Salem. And in about two weeks, we’ll be moving to our new home at 226 South Liberty Street. With a new name comes a new visual identity, which you can see represented here, and a new website: www.musews.org!
In the coming days and weeks, there will be much more news to share about the future of MUSE Winston-Salem, but for starters, let us answer a couple questions:
“Why ‘MUSE Winston-Salem’?â€
We love our new name for a few reasons. First, “MUSE” is short for “museum.” It’s also an acronym for Museum of Understanding, Storytelling, and Engagement. We know that’s a lot of words—and we probably won’t say it out loud that much—but it perfectly expresses our mission “to connect, enrich, and enlarge the community through history, storytelling, and informed, balanced perspective that leads to acceptance, understanding, and belonging.”
We also like the word “MUSE” for its ancient historical associations with inspiration, playfulness, and reflective learning. Those are qualities we want to bring to everything we do, and to you, our community.
Finally, we love having the full name of our favorite city—WINSTON-SALEM—incorporated into our name and visual identity. After all, that’s the city whose stories we are devoted to telling.
“Where is MUSE Winston-Salem?”
Starting in February, our offices and staff will be found on the 1st floor of 226 South Liberty Street. That’s immediately south of the soon-to-be-reopened Salem Parkway (a.k.a. Business 40), right where a new pedestrian bridge will soon connect the beautiful Strollway that stretches from 4th Street, past Old Salem, almost all the way to UNCSA.
Following a renovation, we will re-open to the public in 2021 with multiple galleries for changing exhibits, interactive AR/VR technology, hands-on activities, an oral history recording studio, and flexible space suited for lectures, events, and performances, as well as for hosting school groups and sharing with other community organizations.
The building sits on city-owned land that was the historic homestead of skilled African-American potter Peter Oliver, a formerly enslaved man who secured his freedom and lived the remainder of his life there in the early 19th century. We are looking forward to helping the bigger community effort to shine new light on the Oliver legacy.
We are so happy to share this news with you, and look forward to carrying forward the founding ideals of New Winston Museum and its visionary patron, the late Frank Borden Hanes, Sr. Very soon, we’ll be letting you know about opportunities to get a sneak preview inside our new building, which we’ll be activating in some pretty neat ways even before we start renovations.
Thanks for reading! And thanks for supporting us through these changes. We’re just getting started!