The New South’s home in South End

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by Ashley Fahey

Earlier this year, the Levine Museum of the New South disclosed plans to move to South End, a major shift that museum leadership hopes will help redefine how Charlotte engages with its history, its community and its constant state of change.

After years without a permanent home, the museum will soon break ground on a new building in the heart of booming South End, a campus that’ll blend modern design with the (hopeful) preservation of the historic Grace Covenant Church site.

In a recent episode of The Charlotte Ledger Podcast, Levine Museum president and CEO Richard Cooper spoke about the museum’s search for a new home, why South End emerged as the right fit and how the institution wants to continue facilitating difficult, but important, conversations.

Here are a few highlights from the conversation, edited for brevity and clarity:

Q: What was the process the Levine Museum undertook to look for a new facility in Charlotte?

We went through a selection process of over 35 different locations across Charlotte, and all the elements landed in the South End. It has a historical connection with faith and religion. It connects the east and the west. It's right on the light rail, the walkability there, the growth of the South End. There’s so many reasons.

Q: Was it challenging to find a site in South End?

There were pros and cons of every site we looked at through this process. This Grace Covenant Church [site], which we purchased at 1800 South Blvd., was actually no longer on the market. It was for a number of years, and when we reached out to the church elders about the possibility, they got excited, too, because of the opportunity to preserve the church, the opportunity for this to become a museum and the story that that could relate to it.

Q: We actually heard from a few readers after the news came out about the site's history. But I'd love to hear about how that played into the decision to relocate the Levine Museum here, and how you plan to continue to either honor that history or make sure it stays preserved.

We've always, even in our old Seventh Street building, talked about the history of Billy Graham and faith and religion. That's a major influencer of the New South story. So logically, it made sense to us to have a space like this. Our mission is to connect the past to the present, and having a historic building with a modern building as we work through that process and what that looks like, it just made the story a lot more interesting to us.

Q: I’m sure there’s a lot more listening and engagement to come, but what will that look like over the next few months?

We are, over the next couple of months, going to be launching a number of community sessions. We'll be continuing to bring the architects back as an iterative process with the community, sharing, collecting feedback. We'll also begin to have vision experiences where we will have themes that could potentially go into the new building, where we will create an exhibition.

People from all across the South will get to come and engage with this feedback, add stories, add oral histories to it. We'll collect that over the next year, and that will actually inform the first major exhibition that will go into the museum.

Q: Especially as we have so many people moving to Charlotte, they might not know what the Levine Museum of the New South is. How would you explain the museum to a newcomer?

What I would say if anybody wants to come and engage with us is, we're a space that is allowing for conversations to happen. We're trying to bring people together. We're trying to foster learning, and we're trying to allow dialogue to begin through the good stories of the South, the celebrations of the stories of the South, but also stories that have often been overlooked or are challenging, and I think that's the power of the museum.

Q: And how does that look in this era we're in, where things feel so divisive? Maybe people aren't listening as closely as they could be. How are you facilitating and fostering those difficult conversations?

The American Alliance of Museums, which is the accrediting body of museums, has done a ton of research across the United States and really around the world on the trust of museums, and in many ways, people rank museums and libraries still as the most trusted organizations. That's above colleges and universities. That's above the press. That's a big weight to put on our shoulders. People are coming in expecting us to use research and data and historical records to tell stories and bring them to life. In many ways, people are coming to museums already expecting us to have these types of real, truthful conversations that we need to have as a community.

And for me, what's most exciting about museums is, we have lost that ability to communicate with one another, and a space where we can come together and try to create spaces where people can step into these spaces in a safe way is what's most exciting for me. 

Q: And when would you like to have a shovel in the ground, ideally?

I'm not ready to say that yet. But sooner than later. We'll be sharing more about that over the coming months and what that looks like. Our goal is to have this up in the early 2030s. Obviously, permitting and things like that play into this, but we're pretty confident we're on the right path.

Q: What's a piece of New South history that you wish more people in Charlotte knew about?

We just launched an incredible new experience online called Southern Tables, and it looks at 21 unique dishes. I think that the food and the cultural understanding, the migration and immigration that is happening here in the South, and the influences that's playing on how the future of the New South will look … that's the most exciting thing for me right now.

🎧 To listen to the full conversation, check out the episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Today's supporting sponsor is Arts+:

Some basic economic principles seem, at least on their face, apolitical. But the world is changing so rapidly that political maneuvers are quickly upending long-accepted economic systems and assumptions, because access and pricing of raw goods and materials are increasingly linked to policy decisions and where political power is concentrating.

William Thomson, managing partner at Massif Capital, was the featured speaker at this month’s Charlotte Economics Club. Thomson presented key findings of a paper he expects to be published this week on how geopolitical shifts are affecting commodity pricing.

A real-time example of how this affects the average consumer is, of course, the Iran War. Gas prices are up 50% since the start of the war. Pricing for materials like copper is also rising since the conflict.

Wars have always affected the cost of goods and materials, but perhaps not to the extent they are today. Thomson cited specifically the Russia-Ukraine war, in which swings in commodities pricing have been felt by countries across the globe, including fertilizer prices doubling and wheat hitting an all-time high, Thomson said. And when the Houthis started attacking ships in the Red Sea in 2023, cargo ships had to be rerouted, adding cost (in large part because of longer routes and higher insurance requirements) to those goods.

The geology for where natural resources can be found was once the key determining factor in access and cost of raw materials — but that’s no longer the case, Thomson said.

“Geology has been demoted by geography,” he continued.

One example: Indonesia controls about 20% of the world's nickel supply, but in 2013, the country produced only about 2%. Indonesia at that time had been sending raw nickel ore to China for about $63 a ton, then re-importing that material as stainless steel for $2,200 a ton.

“That all changed in 2014, when they banned the export of unprocessed nickel ore,” Thomson said. “The value of the nickel is not a function of geology. It is a function of who and where the commodity is used.”

Because China today refines and processes so many of the world’s critical materials, that’s given the country significant concentrated economic power and influence over access and cost to those goods. And because China has banned exports of certain materials, such as antimony, that’s dramatically escalated pricing for those items across the world. Antimony (which is used in batteries, flame retardants and ammunition) went from $1,400 per ton in July 2024 to $38,000 per ton in September — a 2,600% increase in just two months.

Thomson cited a 2019 paper by Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman — professors at George Washington University and Georgetown University, respectively — the thesis of which was that globalization has not produced a “flat, frictionless world,” but instead has produced asymmetrical global networks of finance, information and trade.

“What you see are hubs that are controlled by individual jurisdictions,” he said. “So while globalization appears to flatten the surface and make free trade quite free, in fact, it has funneled the economy through these hubs.”

The Charlotte Economics Club holds monthly luncheons and other events on economic policy, business trends, regional growth issues and global economic themes. The Ledger is the club’s media partner. —Ashley Fahey

After we published a list of birthday freebies around Charlotte on Saturday, a couple of Ledger readers emailed us with some deals we missed. Here are some additional spots to add to your birthday bucket list:

Thanks for sharing your birthday freebie insider info! —Lindsey Banks

Events submitted by readers to The Ledger’s events board:

TODAY: “A Conversation with Chef Sam Hart,” 5:30-7 p.m., at ImaginOn: The Joe and Joan Martin Center, 300 E. 7th St. Join the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation for an evening at the intersection of culinary arts and library advocacy. In a moderated conversation, the city’s first Michelin-starred chef, Sam Hart, will share how storytelling shapes every course they create and why they’re donating a curated collection of culinary books to the new Main Library at Charlotte Mecklenburg Library. $15/ticket.

THURSDAY: “South Charlotte Partners Breakfast Club,” 8-9:30 a.m., at Morrison Family YMCA, 9405 Bryan Farms Rd. Join South Charlotte Partners for a panel discussion exploring the unprecedented growth happening along the U.S. Highway 521 corridor, where thoughtful commercial and residential development have made the four-lane road into the backbone of a thriving community. Moderated by Tony Mecia of The Charlotte Ledger, the conversation brings together leaders in business advocacy, transportation, real estate and local government who are helping guide this growth. $25 in advance. $35 at the door.

FRIDAY: “Weekly Meeting of Senior Scholars,” 10-11 a.m., at Providence United Methodist Church, 2810 Providence Rd. Join the members of Senior Scholars as Dr. Kimberly Scott, interim director of the Mecklenburg County Public Health Department, explores how neighborhoods, housing, transportation, food access and more influence health and quality of life. $5 for guests. $25 annual membership.

➡️ List your event on the Ledger events board.