MAMRH - Mount Airy Museum of Regional History

Mount Airy News

Literature, Music, Wine, and Wildlife to be found at Regional Museum

As the leaves change from green to hues to golds, reds and orange, this weekend’s Mount Airy’s Annual Autumn Leaves Festival, a mainstay event in the region for more than 40 years, will feature art, crafts, music, food and fun.

In addition to the regularly schedule Autumn Leaves activities, the Mount Airy Museum of Regional History is offering a full palate of activities during the weekend. On both Friday and Saturday, the museum will host a dozen regional authors for book signings in the Museum Gift Shop from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day.

On both Friday and Saturday evenings, the museum will be concluding its summer long Toast and Jam concert series with performance is by local bluesman Reggie Johnson and Carolina Nights at 6 p.m. Wine for both events will be provided by Old North State Winery.

Junior historians explore geocaching

The local chapter of the Tar Heel Junior Historians is up and running again this year as participants learn about geocaching for their group project.

Open to students in fourth through eighth grade, the Jesse Franklin Chapter meets at the Mount Airy Museum of Regional History on the first and third Thursdays of the month and allows participants to learn more about the history of the area. Each year, the group undertakes a project to submit to the state-wide competition and for the first time this year, members of this chapter will also be required to complete an individual project as well.

For this year’s group project, the historians will learn about geocaching, a worldwide treasure hunt in which people hide caches at locations around the world and upload the location’s coordinates to a Web site.

Craft Exhibit Opens at the Mount Airy Museum of Regional History

A brand new exhibit opened at the Mount Airy Museum of Regional History on Friday. It features art from the Yadkin Valley Craft Guild.

The exhibit is located on the third floor of the museum and it will be an ever-changing exhibit, because the items on display are also for sale.

Matt Edwards, executive director for the museum, hopes this exhibit will become an annual event at the museum. He said the exhibit was timed to open just in time for the Autumn Leaves Festival. Last year, he met Aaron Blackwelder, who is the president of the Yadkin Valley Craft Guild, during the Autumn Leaves Festival and he asked him then if the guild would be interested in exhibiting its work at the museum.

Museum members preview new African-American Builders exhibit

The Mount Airy Museum of Regional History opened its doors last night after hours to preview its brand new African-American Builders exhibit to members and their guests.

Many in attendance at the event had relatives who were African-American builders and some said they truly learned from the exhibit.

Casino night planned as museum’s largest fundraiser

Although, the Casino Royale night is being planned for Oct. 21 as a fundraiser for the Mount Airy Museum of Regional History, tickets for the big event went on sale Friday.

Matt Edwards, executive director of the Mount Airy Museum of Regional History, said the event will be held at Cross Creek Country Club from 7 to 11 p.m.

“It’s a great new event for the museum and the community. We’ve kind of refrained this year from doing a lot of true fund raising. We did a few parties earlier in the year, but this is really our big one and done event for the year. It will determine whether the museum closes out the year in the black or in the red. It’s a pretty big deal for us in terms of getting folks in the community behind it. It’s something that we think is going to be tremendously fun for everybody involved,” said Edwards.