Stone Mountain board selects Warner Museums to design new exhibits

ATLANTA — The board of the Stone Mountain Memorial Association selected Birmingham- and Nashville-based Warner Museums to design new history exhibits for Memorial Hall at Stone Mountain Park.

Warner has experience designing exhibits that address the South’s complex history of racism, including at Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, the Negro Southern League Museum and the Montgomery Bus Station Freedom Riders Museum.

“This park, and the new exhibits, offer a unique opportunity for presenting history in a way that informs, educates, and challenges people to learn about their shared history,” the Rev. Abraham Mosley, chairman of the board, said. “After having seen their work up close, we have no doubt that the fine folks at Warner Museums can do that.”

The board selected Warner Museums from a list of six applicants after visiting some of the company’s sites in person. Board members were impressed with exhibits they saw from the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church site, where four black girls were killed in a bombing in 1963, and the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center in Chattanooga, Tenn.

“The exhibit galleries will explore the complete and complex history of Stone Mountain, and I would point out this is only the beginning of a longer process of getting input from all parties and working with the community to put together a project the state of Georgia can be proud of,” Stone Mountain Memorial Association CEO Bill Stephens said.

The process is expected to take one to two years to complete, said Stephens, and so far, no decisions about exhibit content have been finalized.

The exhibit designers and the board will consult with historians as well as members of the public about their thoughts on the exhibit, Stephens said.

“A lot of this project is about memory and about how people remember things from the Civil War,” Stephens said. “We need to talk to experts, historians and others about how that memory comes about.”

The decision to award the new contract comes on the heels of major changes in the park’s management. In July, a new company, Thrive Attractions, took over management of the park from a former park manager that had been in place for 30 years. And the board adopted a new logo for the association last year that leaves out the Confederate symbols contained in the old logo.

In preparing the new exhibit, Warner Museums will need to navigate controversies over the park’s past and present. Many have been critical of the park’s close association with Georgia’s Confederate past, calling for a plan to cover up or minimize the large carving of three Confederate political and military leaders on the granite outcropping’s northeastern face.

But the carving cannot be removed because the General Assembly passed legislation in 2019 prohibiting removing historic monuments from public property. And park management has been reluctant to change other reminders of the Confederate past, such as streets named after Confederate leaders.

Stephens said that listening would be key to navigating potential controversies over the museum content.

“If some people on both sides are a little uncomfortable, then you’re probably doing something right,” he said.

The exhibit is slated to be completed in one-and-a-half to two years, said Stephens.

The Stone Mountain Memorial Association is the park’s chief governing authority. Its members are appointed by the governor.

Photo: Stone Mountain Memorial Association