Plans for Charleston’s International African-American Museum will go before the city’s Board of Architectural Review next Wednesday for a request for preliminary approval for new construction. Cost for the new 35,000-square-foot facility at Gadsden’s Wharf has been estimated to be around $75 million.
Preliminary designs for the museum show that it will include a section dedicated to the Gullah-Geechee people, a family history center that will allow visitors to learn more about their ancestors, and an exhibit called Atlantic Connections, which will endeavor to uncover the cultures and diversity of the 100,000 of Africans who arrived at Charleston Harbor in chains during the peak of the slave trade.
In June, former Charleston Mayor Joseph P. Riley and IAAM President Michael Moore stated that if funding efforts remain on course, the museum could open its doors by the end of 2018 or early the following year.
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