The NCCHR is marking its 10th anniversary this year with a major expansion. In 2022, philanthropist and business mogul Arthur M. Blank committed $15 million toward the center’s $56 million capital campaign which will add two wings to the downtown museum.

The three-story west wing will be named for Blank. A new one-story east wing will have classrooms, and spaces for large-scale dinners and conferences.

In January, the center will close for nine months to connect the two wings and reorganize existing space and exhibitions.

Credit: National Center for Civil and Human Rights

Credit: National Center for Civil and Human Rights

In the meantime, it is business as usual for the center. Throughout the summer, visitors can still come to the center to experience how civil and human rights play out not only in America but across the globe, through standing and permanent exhibits.

Also this summer, on Aug. 24, the center will put on “Kidspiration,” an interactive summer program that teaches kids ages 3-12 how to influence the world and be active citizens. The daylong program incorporates various activities for youth, centered on voting, freedom, equality, advocacy, and other topics related to civic engagement.

Credit: National Center for Civil and Human Rights

Credit: National Center for Civil and Human Rights

On each day, there will also be the staging of the performance, “The Next King.” Written by playwright Nikki Toombs, the short play follows a community of jungle animals as they elect a new leader. It’s goal: introducing children to the principles of civic engagement and voting, while inspiring them to become future changemakers.

“It is all very timely,” Savitt said. “The exhibitions, especially right now, with what’s going on in our country … We need to remember how people protect democracy: people working together to win the right to vote and how people nonviolently work together to participate in government. And if ever there was a moment where we needed inspiration on that front. It’s today.”

With a goal of inspiring people “to tap their own power to change the world around them,” the National Center for Civil and Human Rights opened in downtown Atlanta in 2014.

Credit: Seeger Gray / AJC

Credit: Seeger Gray / AJC

The $75 million, 42,000 square feet center, built with private and public money, is in the heart of the evolving tourist corridor, sharing Pemberton Place with the World of Coca-Cola and the Georgia Aquarium. The College Football Hall of Fame is a football toss away, as is Centennial Olympic Park.

From day one, the center of the museum has been the Morehouse College Martin Luther King Jr. Collection of papers displayed in the Voice to the Voiceless Gallery.

Comprising more than 10,000 papers and books spanning from 1944 to 1968, the collection was acquired in 2006 for $32 million, with the help of former Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, who didn’t want them split up at auction. The collection was donated to Morehouse after the purchase.

Now, a decade later, Savitt and the museum are envisioning how the expansion will take the center to new heights.

“There has been a strategic process for the last four or five years to move from being a venue and attraction to being a human rights cultural center,” Savitt said.

“That’s the leap we’re making. We want to be a place where people don’t just come to see our exhibitions. We want to be a place where people come to learn, in broader ways, about civil and human rights today, and historically.”

In mid-July, Cynthia P. Roddey, a retired college professor, visited the center with her daughter-in-law. She sat at the famous model of a lunch counter, an interactive and audio simulation, that places participants in the middle of nonviolent protesters during the 1960 Greensboro Sit-ins.

Credit: Seeger Gray / AJC

Credit: Seeger Gray / AJC

To some, listening to the voices coming out of the headphones can be jarring.

For Roddey, who attended boarding school at Immanuel Lutheran College in Greensboro, North Carolina, it was familiar.

“I’m very familiar with a lot of the stuff that’s here. I was born in 1940, so I’ve lived through this,” said Roddey, who in 1964 was the first Black student to attend Winthrop College. “While the North Carolina A&T students were demonstrating against the lunch counters, we were demonstrating against the movies.”

Watching near an exhibit of a bus emblazed with mug shots of John Lewis and other civil rights workers, Kama Pierce, the center’s chief program officer, could barely contain her enthusiasm for the future. She pointed at existing spaces and blank walls, envisioning where new exhibits would go.

Right now, the historical timeline of the current exhibit starts in the 1950s. The re-imagined museum will begin at Reconstruction, moments after the end of slavery. She said they will also dig deeper into Atlanta’s role in the Civil Rights Movement, while also examining the Black Power Movement.

Credit: Seeger Gray / AJC

Credit: Seeger Gray / AJC

“For the first 10 years, our first iteration, we have gotten a lot of great feedback and we’re able to incorporate that to really take the museum to the next level,” Pierce said.

As part of the expansion, the gallery displaying the MLK papers will move from the lowest level to the lobby level at the facility’s entrance. The civil rights and human rights galleries will both be refurbished.

The new west wing will include a cafe on the first floor and a gallery focusing on racial violence. There will also be a special section devoted to teaching children the legacy of civil and human rights.

“We really feel like the center belongs to the city. The support has been incredible, but we still have a ways to go,” Savitt said. “We want people to see all that they have supported so far and to see what they are supporting in the future.”

Here is a look at what other museums are doing this summer.

Fit for a King

The King Center, 449 Auburn Ave.

Credit: AJC

Credit: AJC

Founded by Coretta Scott King and located within the greater Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change is a living tribute to Georgia’s first Nobel Peace Prize recipient.

Tourists can visit inside the King Center and tour exhibits in Freedom Hall or visit the bookstore, but the majesty is outside. On an island in the middle of a large blue cascading reflecting pool, the King Center houses the marble crypt that serves as the final resting place for Martin and Coretta.

Across from it is the Eternal Flame, symbolizing the continuing effort to realize King’s dream of the “Beloved Community.

Also on the grounds is the new Coretta Scott King Peace and Meditation Garden, an interactive, handcrafted sculpture of microphones on a mosaic tile plinth. Visitors can use the power of their own voices, by having the opportunity to speak into the sculpture and have their own words amplified.

Admission and Parking are free.

A Downtown Kingdom

Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park, 450 Auburn Avenue.

Spanning several blocks in the very neighborhood where Martin Luther King Jr. was born, lived, worked, worshipped and is buried the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park, run by the National Park Service, is a walking museum.

Your first stop should be the visitor center, to explore the “Children of Courage” exhibit, which is geared toward our younger visitors, as well as the featured exhibit “Courage to Lead” which follows the parallel paths of King and the Civil Rights Movemen, and the DREAM Gallery. Then join in with the marchers on their journey up “Freedom Road.”

The visitor center is also the place to check schedules for free park ranger programs including guided tours inside Historic Fire Station No. 6 and Historic Ebenezer Baptist Church.

Unfortunately, the Martin Luther King Jr. Birth Home will not be open for inside tours, as it is closed for a major restoration project. It can still, however, be viewed from the outside.

Admission is free and the park is open daily from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m.

Caught in a Trap

Trap Music Museum, 630 Travis St.

Founded in 2018 by Atlanta rap icon T.I., the Trap Music Museum continues to attract thousands of guests every weekend who are looking to experience a bit of the trap game.

National Geographic once described the museum, dedicated to the “trap music” hip-hop subgenre (a phrase coined by T.I.), as one of the best musical landmarks in the Deep South.

Trap Music Museum, featuring 2 Chainz’s Iconic Pink Car, is an interactive experience that uses art to showcase trap music’s rich culture. The museum also features authentic memorabilia from trap stars like Future, Jeezy, Gucci Mane, Cardi B. and 21 Savage.

The museum is open Thursdays through Sundays. An Escape Room is open daily.

High Notes

High Museum of Art, 1280 Peachtree St., NE

Assuming you are already attending Friday Jazz at the High every third Friday, Atlanta’s premier museum has a lot to offer this summer.

One is “Tyler Mitchell: Idyllic Space,” which will run through Dec. 1. Featuring more than 30 photographs from the Atlanta-born Mitchell, the exhibit centers on work that blends fashion and conceptual photography.

Credit: Tyler Mitchell

Credit: Tyler Mitchell

“Truth Told Slant: Contemporary Photography,” on view through Aug. 11, brings together photos from five photographers examining how to make meaningful images of the world around them. Rather than the traditional documentary approach of dispassionate observation, they’re doing so in a stylistically expressive manner.

The museum is also featuring “Patterns in Abstraction: Black Quilts from the High’s Collection,” which runs through Jan. 5, 2025. Featuring the works of Lucy T. Pettway, Louisiana Bendolph, Annie Mae Young, O.V. Brantley and more, this collection-based exhibition is the first to bring together recent acquisitions to answer a larger question: “How can quilts made by Black women change the way we tell the history of abstract art?”

Credit: Handout

Credit: Handout

Beyond special exhibitions, the museum also displays works from its African, American, Decorative Art and Design, European, Folk and Self-Taught Art, Modern and Contemporary and Photography collections.

The High Museum of Art is open Tuesday through Sunday; the museum is closed on Mondays. The last ticket each day is issued one hour prior to closing.

Hammonds rhythms

Hammonds House, 503 Peeples St.

Credit: Michael Moss

Credit: Michael Moss

Hammonds House Museum, a repository of more than 450 pieces of Black art from the past three centuries, will spend the summer focusing on mixed-media artist Sam Middleton, with “Rhythm and Resilience: The Artistry of Sam Middleton.”

Born in Harlem and influenced by jazz, Middleton pioneered a vibrant visual expression of music and rhythm through his abstract collage-based works, bathed in color and texture.

The exhibit will run through August 31.

Atlanta History Center’s home run

Atlanta History Center Museum, 130 W Paces Ferry Rd NW.

Credit: Ben Gray

Credit: Ben Gray

Summer usually means baseball and can catch all of that and more at the Atlanta History Center. In April, the museum opened its 2,500 square-foot tribute to Hank Aaron exhibit in a stunning homage to Aaron’s life and career.

“More Than Brave: The Life of Henry Aaron,” is located in the Atlanta History Center’s Exhibit Hall in Buckhead and is open to the public through September of 2025.

On April 8, 1974, Aaron hit his 715th career MLB home run, breaking Babe Ruth’s all-time record of 714, which previously stood since 1935. It is arguably the greatest moment in Atlanta sports history and cemented Aaron, who died in 2021 at the age of 86, as a city and global icon.

The sprawling exhibit features artifacts and memorabilia from Aaron’s life on and off the field and was provided by the Atlanta Braves, the Aaron family, the Atlanta History Museum and the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

Tickets to the museum, which includes the exhibit, can be purchased online at atlantahistorycenter.com/exhibitions or at the Atlanta History Center ticket office.

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