This Charleston museum welcomes most visitors in over 20 years in 2023

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The Charleston Museum experienced a banner year in 2023 amid its anniversary celebration.

 The museum commemorated 250 years since its founding with special exhibits and events throughout 2023, and the response was overwhelming, according to a news release. The museum and its two National Historic Landmark houses, the Heyward-Washington House and Joseph Manigault House, welcomed over 127,000 guests during the year, the highest number since 2001. Museum visitation has increased 6% over 2022 and increased 10% over the four-year average immediately before the pandemic.

Visitors hailed from across the state, nation and world.

“We are thrilled to have experienced such significant numbers during our special 250^th anniversary year,” said Carl Borick, director of The Charleston Museum, in the release. “This milestone is a testament to our visitors’ profound interest in the history of our area, and we could not be more pleased that our mission of educating the public about the cultural and natural history of the South Carolina Lowcountry resonated so strongly.”

The Museum Board of Trustees and staff expect to carry this momentum into the new year, the release stated. Nighttime at the Museum 21+ is returning this year on Friday, Jan. 12, and tickets are selling out fast; The museum will host a collaborative exhibition with the Gibbes Museum of Art titled The Art of Abstraction: Modernism in Quilting from Jan. 20 through Sept. 15; and among other projects planned are the completion of permanent exhibits up through the 20^th century, which will include many pieces not exhibited before or shown only rarely.

The new exhibition is scheduled to be installed in October and will open to the public shortly thereafter.