Museum Confirms Plans For Appomattox Facility
(August 2009 Civil War News)

RICHMOND, Va. — The Museum of the Confederacy Board of Trustees decided at its June meeting to continue planning for the Museum of the Confederacy Appomattox, according to a museum press release.

Although the current economy and the climate for raising capital will delay the construction phase, Appomattox will be the first of three new museum sites in the Museum of the Confederacy’s expansion across the Virginia.

According to president and CEO S. Waite Rawls III the museum has completed the interpretive plans and invested over $500,000 in the Appomattox planning phase, including the work of nationally recognized architects and exhibit designers.

The Appomattox Town Council has signed a contract stating its commitment to purchase four acres of land near the intersection of Route 24 and the Highway 460 bypass. The land will then be leased to the Museum of the Confederacy.
The Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star reported Appomattox County officials are not interested in buying an additional four acres to be added to the museum tract.

 “The beauty of the plan from the very beginning has been that it is adaptable according to the fundraising climate and the conditions of the economy,” Rawls said in the release. “We have a set sequence of events that need to occur and we can slow down or speed up the process and still reach our ultimate goal.”

The museum is in what it calls the quiet phase of a capital campaign. When the money has been raised, the board will move forward with the hiring of a contractor for construction.

Rawls said the goal remains to have the Museum of the Confederacy Appomattox open early in the Civil War sesquicentennial.

In addition to its galleries, the museum will retain the White House, headquarters, marketing and development functions, research library, and collections storage and conservation and preservation efforts in Richmond.

The other future sites include the Fredericksburg region and Fort Monroe. The June 17 Free Lance-Star carried a story in which Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania County officials said they hadn’t heard from Rawls in months, but they realized the museum was concentrating on Appomattox, which a museum spokesman confirmed to the paper.

W.J. Vakos & Company, which is developing The Spotsylvania Courthouse Village, has offered to build a museum in that complex.

For more information about the Museum of the Confederacy’s plans for a museum system go to www.moc.org