South Carolina State Museum Planetarium Exterior

Annual Fund

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Dear Friends,

As we look back on 2022 and move forward into the New Year, we want to share with you our ongoing appreciation for your support! We have been taking this year to engage with our community and begin to “re-imagine” SCSM’s future through an ambitious project that includes a complete redesign and expansion of the museum galleries.

We kicked off this project with the renovation of the Education Wing to better serve the 60,000+ school children that visit us annually with a more welcoming, ADA accessible environment in which to learn and be inspired. We are happy to say that Phase 1 of this project is now complete and are now moving forward with Phase 2, which will add ADA bathrooms as well as a new health and safety room for guests, including our museum campers.

Additionally, we completed the largest upgrade to the museum’s BlueCross BlueShield of SC Planetarium since it opened in 2014. These improvements and additions of cutting-edge technology, which include new cove lights, reupholstered seats, 4K laser projectors and an upgraded software system, allow guests to experience the planetarium in a whole new light with brighter, more defined and more colorful visual effects.

Behind-the-scenes, several important IT infrastructure projects have been completed- including a museum-wide Wi-Fi access upgrade and an updated online museum store to make holiday shopping a breeze.

Finally, we are happy to announce that the museum has partnered with the international design firm Gallagher and Associates to create a concept design and feasibility study for the museum’s permanent exhibitions, educational spaces and behind-the-scenes collections storage. We are grateful to community members from around the state who contributed ideas to the project this past summer. We are excited to continue those conversations and share initial design concepts with you in Spring 2023.

Whether it is exciting planetarium upgrades, diverse and engaging exhibitions, or a fresh museum landscape -you are always our first thought in the planning process. We hope you will continue to support the efforts of the South Carolina State Museum. We have included a donation form and invite you to make a gift in support of our Annual Fund. A gift of any size will help us reach our goals of creating a welcoming, engaging, diverse and accessible museum for all of South Carolina.

Wishing you and your families a very Happy New Year. We can’t wait to see you at the State Museum in 2023!

With gratitude,

 

Amy Bartow-Melia
Executive Director, SC State Museum

P.S. Please remember that donations to the South Carolina Museum Foundation Annual Fund are 100% tax deductible. As a reminder many companies will match employee charitable donations up to a certain level. Your H.R. department can give you information about matching gifts, or check with the museum’s Development Office to see if your company is a matching gift company. Thank you!