Arts & Culture

A new exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Art offers visitors an unprecedented chance to follow the 40 year career of one of Africa’s most celebrated contemporary artists.

A Civil War artifact is back in North Carolina to help commemorate the battle of New Bern.

Jeff Tiberii: On March 14th, 1862 nearly 500 soliders were wounded at the Battle of New Bern. A Massachusetts made cannon began that day in confederate hands. It had been used in the early part of the Civil War in Eastern North Carolina. However, the Amherst Cannon was seized by it’s original Union owners in the fight. Dr. Jeanne Marie Warzeski is curator at the North Carolina Museum of History.

When the Smithsonian opens its National Museum of African American History and Culture in 2015, part of its collection will be oral histories of the Civil Rights movement. The project began with an American Folklife Center survey of hundreds of existing oral history collections around the country before the Smithsonian set out to conduct new interviews with those who participated in the movement.

An exhibit about Roanoke Island's role in the Civil War opens at the Outer Banks Visitor Center today. Curator Kaeli Schurr says capturing the island was an important part of the strategy for both the confederacy and the union.

Kaeli Schurr: After a long summer of both sides training troops and devising military strategy, both knew that whoever would be able to control the supply lines would control all of eastern North Carolina. And that led then to being able to disrupt the supply lines from Wilmington up to the Confederate capital in Richmond.