The Ava Gardner Museum commemorates the life and achievements of the legendary actress of the classic Hollywood cinema, Ava Gardner. Gardner (1922-1990) was born and raised on a farm in rural North Carolina. She loved watching movies in the local cinema but never had she thought she would become a worldwide famous movie star. After attending secretarial classes for a year, she visited her sister in New York City. An MGM talent scout spotted Gardner’s photo outside her brother-in-law’s photography studio. Despite her North Carolina accent and no previous acting experience, Gardner was offered a contract and moved to Hollywood, starting a 5-decade acting career. When Gardner was a secretarial student in Wilson, NC, she was friendly to a local 12-year-old boy named Tommy Banks. When he discovered her life took a turn and she started a career in Hollywood, he became her fan, and they stayed in touch. Tommy grew up to become Thomas, and his wife, Lorraine, collected items about Gardner over the years. When they visited Gardner in 1978 in London, she expressed her wish that the collection would become a museum in her honor in North Carolina. That same year, a community journalist named Doris Rollins Cannon wrote a newspaper column entitled: “Isn’t It Time That Smithfield Saluted Ava?” The Banks and Doris got in touch, which led to a temporary exhibition of part of the collection in downtown Smithfield. With Doris’ help, they operated the museum every summer between 1981 and 1989 at the old Brogden School Teacherage building, where Ava lived from ages 2 to 13. Since 1991, the museum has been open in the historic downtown of Smithfield, a small North Carolina town close to where Ava’s childhood home once stood. A visit to the museum starts with a 20-minute movie about Gardner’s life. Exhibits are arranged chronologically, from her humble childhood in North Carolina to Hollywood glamorous life. There is a nice collection of personal items, such as artifacts, photos, jewelry, china, and clothing, as well as souvenirs of her professional experience of awards, costumes, scripts, movie posters, and fine art, including portraits by Bert Pfeiffer. Read more...

A statue honoring Queen Elizabeth I – the first British colonist in the new world and one of the most powerful women of all time. Located at the heart of Elizabethan Gardens – the site where the original settlers established the first colony in America. The 9 feet tall bronze statue is the world’s largest statue of the queen. Created by Jon Hair and was dedicated on May 13th, 2004. It depicts the queen standing tall, wearing her majestic laced gown, holding traditional English flowers. The Elizabethan Gardens, opened in 1960, was an initiative of the Garden Club of North Carolina – a non-profit organization comprising more than 15,000 women. Their mission was to create a cultural attraction to enhance the significance of this historic site, where the first British colonialists settled in the new world. Read more...

The center is dedicated to commemorate the life and legacy of Pauli Murray as well as continuing her work to advance democracy, justice, non-violence, and equity for all. It welcomes everyone to learn through history, education, arts, and activism programming. By connecting history to contemporary human rights issues, the Pauli Murray Center inspires visitors of all ages to be like Pauli, by standing up and speaking out for their principles. Murray was a 20th-century African-American human rights activist, legal scholar, feminist, poet, Episcopal priest, and LGBTQ community member. Her life and work are exceptionally significant as she served as a bridge figure between American social movements through her advocacy for women’s and civil rights. The center is located in her childhood home. It was built by her grandparents in 1898, and she lived there since her parents’ death until she left for college. It is currently in the process of rehabilitating to reflect its early-twentieth-century appearance through the retention and recreation of architectural elements that date stylistically to the 1898-1906 time period. The missing features will be replicated based on historic photographs. The center has created a self-guided tour in Southwest Central Durham following key locations in Pauli Murray’s life in her neighborhood. Some of the stops have beautiful Murals of her. Click here for more details. Read more...

A larger-than-life bronze statue of the legendary jazz singer, the High Priestess of Soul, Nina Simone (1933-2003), stands in a park bearing her name in her hometown, Tryon, NC. She sits majestically on a stool, playing the piano, and performing. Simone was born Eunice Waymon in Tryon, NC. She was a musically gifted child, teaching herself to play the piano when she was three. Her childhood aspiration was to become a classical pianist but ended up playing and singing her own style- a combination of classic, jazz, gospel, blues, pop, and folk. She created 40 original albums and was a talented songwriter and a civil rights activist. Crys Armbrust established the Nina Simone Memorial Project to celebrate Simone’s legacy, where it all started, in her hometown. The sculptor, Zenos Frudakis, got the commission to create Simone’s statue with the help of her daughter, a musician and Broadway actress, Lisa Simone Kelly, who posed for the sculpture. It was dedicated on Simone’s birthday, February 21st, 2010, seven years after she passed away. The project also installed a marker at her childhood house, 30 East Livingston Street, and plans to restore it. Tryon is an artsy town, home to several galleries, the Tryon History Museum, art centers, and annual festivals. Read more...

Outside the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences along Jones Street stands the Rachel Carson Sculpture and Wildlife Garden Celebrating a Sense of Wonder. Rachel Carson was a writer, marine biologist, and conservationist. She (1907-1964) grew up on a farm near Springdale, Pennsylvania. She loved the outdoors and started writing and publishing stories when she was 10. At college, Carson initially majored in English but soon discovered the field of Biology and switched. She continued studying zoology and genetics at Johns Hopkins in 1929. Five years later, Carson had to leave her Ph.D. studies to work and support her family. In 1935 she started working for the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, writing educational literature about marine life. In 1941, Carson incorporated her writings into the book titled Under the Sea Wind. She got promoted within the Bureau, overseeing a small writing staff by 1945, and in 1949 became chief editor of publications, allowing her the freedom to conduct fieldwork, research, and write. In 1951, she published the book that made her famous, The Sea Around Us. Following the book’s success, she became a full-time writer. After several years researching the impact of chemicals on the ecosystem, in 1962, she stood fearless against the chemical industry and its lobbyists publishing her research in the book Silent Spring. The book brought to the public attention the environmental damage attributed to synthetic pesticides, mainly DDT, and sparked the environmental movement, which led to reforms in the usage of synthetic pesticides. After a long battle with breast cancer, Carson died at age 56. The artist Douglas Alvord created the sculpture, and it was dedicated on May 9th, 2002. The bronze sculpture depicts Carson with a boy and a girl inside a small pool surrounded by plants. On her right palm, she holds a turtle while speaking to the children. A nearby plaque provides details about the statue and enlists all the people and organizations that had sponsored it. The North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences is the largest nature and science museum in the Southeastern United States and the most visited museum in North Carolina. It offers many different exhibits and educational programs for all age groups. Read more...

Etta Lucille Reid Baker (1913-2006) was born in North Carolina to a family of African-American, Native American, and European-American heritage. From a young age, her father, Boone Reid, a musician who played the Piedmont blues, taught her to play the guitar and the Piedmont blues style. Baker worked several jobs since she was a teenager, contributing to the family’s income and occasionally playing with her father and sister at dances and parties. In the summer of 1956, when Baker lived in Morganton, North Carolina, married, and had nine children, her father asked the folksinger Paul Clayton to listen to her music. Clayton recorded five pieces of Baker and included them in the 1956 album Instrumental Music of the Southern Appalachians. It was one of the first commercially released recordings of African-American banjo music. Only in 1973, after several years of being a widow, Baker retired from the textile industry to focus on music. In 1991, she released her first album, One Dime Blues, followed by three more; the last one, an all-banjo instrumental recording, was released posthumously. Until her 90th birthday, Baker performed in folk festivals and concerts nationwide, spreading the Piedmont blues, influencing many musicians, and winning prestigious awards. Several years after her death, the people of Morganton decided to commemorate Baker’s legacy. In 2015, the Etta Baker exhibit opened in the local auditorium. Two years later, on May 25th, a sited statue of Baker by the sculptor Thomas Jay Warren was unveiled outside the Morganton Municipal Auditorium, immortalizing Baker playing her guitar. Read more...