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North Carolina Museum of History
Rating Details »
5 E Edenton St
Raleigh, NC 27601
(919) 715-0200
Raleigh, NC 27601
(919) 715-0200
- Good for Kids:
- Yes
7 reviews for North Carolina Museum of History
I'm not one to complain about a free museum. We spent a drizzly Saturday morning here last weekend. I'd say the museum was pretty crowded around noon when we arrived but it was nothing compared to the hordes of tourists I'm used to up in the DC Smithsonian. It may have been more crowded than normal since they just opened an exhibit on Blackbeard the pirate that I believe was free for kids and $5 for adults. We didn't go in this time but maybe we'll check it out on our second trip later this month. The visitor parking lot across the street still had a few free spots left so we lucked out there.
This museum isn't huge, most of the exhibits are up on the third floor but we enjoyed a good hour and a half just wandering through the free exhibits. My boyfriend really enjoyed the Carbine Williams section. I was surprised that even the North Carolina's Governors exhibit was interesting. They copied the American History Museum in DC's tradition of showing dresses that were worn at inaugural balls.
I'm sure parents appreciated that the museum tried to provide kid friendly parts to most of the exhibits. Even the Decorative Arts section, which was mostly furniture and silverware had little books for kids so they could try to find objects hidden amongst the exhibit.
I always feel like I'm in a low-end office building in RTP when I walk in here. The layout of the building is bizarrely unsuited to a museum, and makes the place feel temporary and confusing.
Even though it's FREE, I haven't been there more than two or three times in my life, because it's just not interesting enough. There's nothing holding the place together, so all the exhibits just seem like a bunch of stuff in a room. Boring.
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I moved to Raleigh from Los Angeles, and was very excited to visit the NC Museum of History. However, I was not at all blown away. The museum suffers from an identity crisis in a serious way, but that will hopefully be cured when the new "North Carolina History" exhibits open this year (funny... why wasn't the HISTORY of North Carolina involved when the museum first opened??)
The exhibits on transportation are pretty interesting, as are the war exhibits.
But really, in a building so large, and with so much potential, there should be so much more!
If I had to pay to get in, a 2-star rating would have been given. But free admission makes it "A-OK."
That being said - there is SO much more about the history of NC that could be told in the STATE history museum... Hopefully the new exhibits will deliver!
This museum is free. How can you complain about a free museum?
The collection is fairly eclectic, with most of the exhibits on the third floor. A Call to Arms showcased artifacts from the various wars that have touched the state since the American Revolution. Nearby is a small exhibit on the U.S.S. North Carolina, the first of the so-called "fast battleships" which marked a significant advance in shipbuilding and naval warfare. The ship was extensively active and highly decorated during World War II. In a corner of that floor is a large display of decorative arts such as ceramics, glass, and textiles.
I skipped several exhibits such as the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame and A Thousand Words: Photographs by Vietnam War Veterans.
Not to be missed is the utterly ridiculous special exhibit Art DuckO: Waterfowl Culture in North Carolina. There are four large rooms full of waterfowl decoys used by hunters; a few dozen firearms; a couple of garish bird-carcass hats; and most excellently of all, a duck-hunt simulation game. Use a laser-pulse rifle to shoot video-game ducks! Fun for all ages (we played this game about ten times between us) but not exactly material for a serious museum. One more thing: the museum owns one of only about 200 known copies of Birds of America--John James Audubon's gorgeous seminal work.
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Hmm, well leave it to me to find a way to have to pay to attend a "free" museum. We came here to check out the "Knights of the Black Flag" exhibit and were asked to pay $5 each to get in to this area of the building. Lots of pictures, lots of cannons and muskets, lots of stuff to read about Blackbeard, and a quick nod to modern pirates of Somalia at the end, and then some stuff for the kids to climb on at the end. Worth $5 ? Maybe....
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This museum is right next door to the Museum of Natural Sciences and I was a little disappointed by it. I have seen far superior history museums in cities a tenth the size of Raleigh. (Santa Fe, NM for example) I expected it to be full of exhibit after exhibit, although the building has three floors only a portion of the top floor had any exhibits. There was a nicely setup display of arms from the American Revolution to the Iraq War. Also a very interesting exhibit of Carbine Williams work in developing arms for World War II. The museum just covered so little history - it was just disappointing. There is so much history in this state that would make great exhibits. Perhaps in time, exhibits will expand to fill the available room in the museum. They also seem to have special events on weekends that are great for kids. The had a make your own rocket event, where kids build a rocket around plastic soda bottles and then got to launch them from a compressed air launcher outside - quite fun. I have to make comment about funding - I have noticed that many of the state funded museums are free here in North Carolina - perhaps they could charge $5 per person and have a monthly free day to help defray the cost of creating and maintaining these places. I just hate to think how many tax dollars are poured into these places each year and it wouldn't hurt to have them at least partially pay their way.
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I guess that I should state right now that I am a history buff, so naturally the history museum would appeal to me. If you don't like history, or museums, then you won't enjoy this. However, I think this museum has a lot of appeal even for those who aren't hard-core museum types. There is a lot relating to daily life and how people lived in the past that is really fascinating. There are permanent collections and rotating exhibits. There are aspects of many of the exhibits that are designed for kids, so they can touch things (actually some are interesting for adults, too, like the Civil War equipment that you can lift to sympathize with the poor guys in their wool uniforms carrying all this around in August!). We've gone on the weekends, and there have been staff manning carts with other things to pick up and handle and to provide more information. The museum itself is free, and if you go on weekends, the parking lot across the street is free, too. What could be a better deal than that?
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