The North Carolina Museum of History has completed the initial production of 360˚ virtual tours of its largest exhibit, The Story of North Carolina!

Top 5 takeaways for The Story of North Carolina 360˚ Virtual Tour

Users can explore the Museum of History’s largest exhibit, The Story of North Carolina, virtually—from anywhere!

Users have two options for touring the 3-D space: an overall walk-through of the entire exhibit or an in-depth exploration of shorter segments, one gallery at a time, in the Student Tour version.

The Student Tour’s shorter segments provide enriched content such as additional information, images of artifacts in 360˚, photographs, and videos.

Users can “walk” inside various exhibit structures, even some that were previously roped off to in-person tours; these include the Martin County cabin that housed seven enslaved people in 1860.

Users should watch for members of our staff throughout the virtual tours! They are waiting to introduce new sections.

To make the Museum of History’s main chronological history exhibit, The Story of North Carolina, accessible to online audiences across the state, and around the world, the museum has created two 360˚ virtual-reality tours of the exhibition: one that provides an overall walk-through of the entire exhibit and is geared to casual adult visitors and a Student Tour that consists of 13 shorter but more detailed gallery tours, to provide educators, students, and lifelong learners readily available, easy-to-use digital social studies resources on a focused theme or time period.

To accomplish those goals, the Student Tours feature a range of additional content—background information, views of artifacts in 360˚, photographs, and videos that work together to provide new insights into 14,000 years of our state’s history—accessed through information dots. These tours also include introductory overviews from museum staff, to introduce important themes covered.

Ready to delve virtually into The Story of North Carolina? Be sure to follow us on social media for updates as the museum expands its virtual offerings. You can also stay up to date on all events and exhibits at the museum website: ncmuseumofhistory.org.

Even when the museum reopens at full capacity, such tours will enable schools to better prepare for field trips and will open up the exhibition to audiences outside the building who cannot travel to Raleigh for in-person viewing.

The North Carolina Museum of History Foundation received funding for these virtual tours in an NC CARES: Humanities Relief Grant from the North Carolina Humanities Council, nchumanities.org; funding for NC CARES was provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act economic stabilization plan.