Charleston Museum
Charleston Museum
Charleston MuseumCharleston Museum
Charleston, SC 29403
Hours:
Monday - Saturday: 9:00a - 5:00p
Sunday: 1:00p - 5:00p
The Charleston Museum, founded in 1773, is one of the oldest museum in the United States. First opened to the public in 1824, the Museum developed prominent collections, which Harvard scientist Louis Aggasiz declared in 1852 to be among the finest in America. Due to the Civil War, operations of the museum were temporarily suspended, but reopened after the war.
The Museum's collections include historic artifacts, decorative and artistic items in silver, and objects relating to natural history. The museum also houses the only known fossil of the now-extinct largest flying bird ever discovered, called Pelagornis Sandersi.
Focusing on the South Carolina Lowcountry, modern collecting emphases include natural history, historical material culture and both documentary and photographic resources. Enjoy the rich variety of exhibited objects ranging from ancient fossils and an enormous whale skeleton to Civil War artifacts and historic Charleston silver. Other collections include Charleston furniture, country textiles in the form on quilts and costumes, Egyptian artifacts, ceramics, paleontology collections of vertebrates and invertebrates, skeletal reconstructions, firearms, archived resources like documents and photographs, local plants and animal species, and rocks and minerals from around the globe.
