One of the oldest museums in the USA, the Charleston Museum in South Carolina was founded in 1773. It was originally opened to the general public in 1824. In 1920, the museum’s director Laura Bragg became the first woman in the US to direct a publicly funded art museum. The current building of the museum was completed in 1980.
The highly reputed collection in the museum includes historic artifacts, decorative and artistic items in silver, and objects relating to natural history. The museum also houses the only known fossil of the now-extinct largest flying bird ever discovered, called Pelagornis Sandersi. Other collections of the museum include Charleston furniture, country textiles in the form on quilts and costumes, Egyptian artifacts, ceramics, paleontology collections of vertebrates and invertebrates, skeletal reconstructions, firearms, archived resources like documents and photographs, local plants and animal species, and rocks and minerals from around the globe. The museum also owns and manages the Dill Sanctuary.
The museum also owns two historically significant Charleston house museums called the Heyward-Washington House and the Joseph Manigault House. The Heyward-Washington House was built in the 18th century and owned by revolutionary patriot and signer of the Declaration of Independence Thomas Heyward, Jr. The place is primarily known because President George Washington stayed in this house during his visit to Charleston in 1792. The Joseph Manigault House is a federal-style home that was built in the 19th century with American, English and French furnishings. It reflects the lifestyle of a well-to-do rice-planting family.