Atlanta History Center has big plans for 150

I caught up this week with Gordon L. Jones, senior military historian and curator at the Atlanta History Center. He gave me a brief overview of what the center has planned to mark the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.

A major symposium scheduled for January 2012 will cover the hot-button issue: Causes of the war.

"The point is to have a discussion," said Jones (left), who hopes to have scholars James McPherson and Gary Gallagher, among others, attend.

The AHC is submitting grant requests for the symposium, the only one in the Southeast. Each symposium across the country will focus on a specific topic.

"It will be the most collective brainpower in one room," Jones promises of the Atlanta event.

Speakers will take questions from the audience, said Jones. "There's not as much room for [Civil War] myth as there used to be."

2014, the actual 150th anniversary of the Atlanta Campaign, will see two exhibits at the AHC.

One is a traveling textile exhibition, with a focus on cloth and quilts. The AHC will include items from its collection, Jones said.

A show tentatively entitled "Relics and Remembrance" will draw from the AHC's own collection to look at lessons from the Civil War. The AHC's current "War in our Backyards" (right) show also includes relics, as well as maps, drawings, an interactive display and a 3-D theater.

The AHC is building 150th partnerships with other institutions, including Port Columbus, Emory University, Georgia Tech and the Georgia Historical Society, said Hillary Hardwick, vice president of marketing.

Jones expects the observation of the 150th anniversary to be different from the centennial, which was told from a Lost Cause, white perspective, he said.

The AHC, for example, has an exhibit entitled "From Civil War to Civil Rights."

Visitors these days are much more diverse, Jones said.

"We didn't see these audiences 20 years ago."

War in Our Backyards: Exhibit shows what Atlanta looked like during Civil War

The bad news: Visible remains of Civil War Atlanta are long gone.

The good news: An exhibit opening Saturday at the Atlanta History Center brings them back in 3-D.

An interactive computer also will allow visitors to click current maps, overlaying 1864 battle and siege lines and troop movements over them.

“Many area residents have no idea what happened literally right under our feet,” the AHC says about “War in Our Backyards: Discovering Atlanta, 1861-1865.”

I’m looking forward to checking out the exhibition and making a fuller report in The Picket. I plan to speak with curator Gordon Jones, who was busy this week putting the final touches on the show, which will run until October 2011.

(Then-and-now photos above): Near the current Fulton Cotton Mill Lofts on Decatur Street, George N. Barnard documented the ruins of a destroyed Confederate ammunition train and the nearby iron mill. Courtesy Kenan Research Center)

Using the latest research, visitors will see how much of the city was destroyed and by whom. “Most battlefield documentation of the 1860s was meant to be seen through stereo viewers, which gave the illusion of three-dimensions. In the exhibition’s theater, visitors once again see Civil War Atlanta in 3-D,” the AHC says in a recent newsletter.

Photos and objects from the collections of Wilbur G. Kurtz, Beverly DuBose, Thomas S. Dickey and George Wray “tell the personal stories of the men who fought in our backyards.” Also on display are five sketches made in 1886 for the Atlanta Cyclorama.

The AHC says rare drawings and sketches will be exhibited for the first time.

President Abraham Lincoln was sweating his re-election bid in the summer of 1864. Union Gen. William T. Sherman’s victory in the vital city ensured his political success.

(Photos above): George N. Barnard made this photograph of the battlefield of Peachtree Creek near the corner of current Collier Road and Dellwood Drive in Buckhead. The clue for identifying the spot was deciphering a name on one of the grave markers in the foreground. Courtesy Kenan Research Center)

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