Discover and Celebrate the Bliss of Asheville and Western North Carolina Area Museums
Art Museums
Asheville Art Museum
"...Innovative programming utilizing an outstanding collection of American art of the 20th and 21st centuries has established the Asheville Art Museum as a leader in the arts for Western North Carolina and the Southeast. It is the only organization of its kind providing cultural and educational experiences for residents and visitors to the 24 county region...." Has many programs, including a Home School Program, Film screenings, concerts, workshops, and more. Located in downtown Asheville in Pack Square.
Black Mountain
Museum + Arts Center
"... is an exhibition space and resource center dedicated to exploring the history and legacy of the world's most acclaimed experimental educational community. We offer changing exhibitions, a video archive, research materials, and a selection of books and other materials for sale..." Located on Broadway in Downtown Asheville. CLICK HERE for rest of story
Fully Awake: Black Mountain College
is a documentary film about the experimental college based in North Carolina from 1933 to 1957, and how its progressive pedagogy influenced many of America's most important twentieth-century artists.
Museum of North Carolina Handicrafts
(Waynesville) "... showcases a distinctive collection of art, handicrafts and furniture created by North Carolina artists. An outgrowth of an annual North Carolina State Fair exhibit, "Village of Yesteryear," the Museum's displays include intricate woodworking, weaving, quilting Seagrove and other pottery, dolls, a Native American room, and many other artifacts...."
Historical Museums
and Historic Homes
Swannanoa Valley Museum
"... preserves and interprets the social, cultural and natural history of the Swannanoa Valley, a pathway to Western North Carolina, by developing dynamic programs and engaging exhibitions for the education and enrichment of the community, its children, and future generations. Permanent exhibits include: Native Americans - Early settlers - Coming of the railroad - Tourism - Religious conference centers - Early Black Mountain and Swannanoa - Watershed development - Black Mountain College - Textiles in the valley - Famous People from the Valley. The museum's library is available to teachers, students, and researchers who wish to learn more about the history of the Swannanoa Valley and Western North Carolina. It also includes many books on Black Mountain College...."
The Smith-McDowell House Museum
"... a restored period house and history museum located at 283 Victoria Road
on the Campus of Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College..."
Thomas Wolfe Memorial
"....Since 1949, Wolfe's historic home has been preserved as a North Carolina State Historic Site and is considered to be one of American literature’s most famous landmarks. Guided tours taking you through the 29 rooms featuring many of the original furnishings, family photos and artifacts, together with audio visual presentations, give visitors an intimate up close look at Wolfe’s works and life. VERY reasonable admission! Directions to Vistor Center located at 52 Market Street
Anthropology Museums
Museum of the Cherokee Indian
"... takes visitors all the way back to the beginnings of human existence here in these glorious, storied mountains of western North Carolina. The museum provides an educational and interactive experience where concise, chronological stories retrace the 11,000 year documented history of the Cherokees. In fact, virtual Cherokee storytellers welcome you and serve as your guides to this interactive museum experience, offering a friendly link between the Cherokee saga and your own growing interest in the fascinating details. You begin by hearing ancient Cherokee myths in the Story Lodge, including the story of the Cherokees’ Adam and Eve, Kanati and Selu, who lived very near where you stand as you take in the tale. You hear how the water beetle, Dayaunishi, brought up mud from under water to form the earth, and how the great buzzard shaped the Great Smoky Mountains with his wings...." See also the Museum's own site Located at Highway 441 and Drama Road in Cherokee Museum Events Calendar
Click on each of the dozens of categories to the left to uncover what makes the Asheville area so vital, so intriguing and so, well, UTTERLY BLISSFUL!
Explore the Bliss of Asheville ...
Via Eric Weiner's new book
The Geography of Bliss
The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World: ".... Asheville, North Carolina, with its idyllic mountain setting and proliferation of good restaurants and New Age healing spas, is enjoying a vogue as a happy place to live. As one newly arrived resident puts it, "A lot of people spin the globe and their finger stops on Asheville."
"....the author is correct, nice weather, affordable housing, lovely scenery, and a slower pace of life, yet an active cultural scene..."
I've never been one of those uptight literary types who thinks that you have to have actually read a book in order to recommend it to others. So I feel no trepidation in suggesting Eric Weiner's new travelogue-slash-memoir The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World The premise of the book is simple but intriguing-- here is Amazon's description:
Part foreign affairs discourse, part humor, and part twisted self-help guide, The Geography of Bliss takes the reader from America to Iceland to India in search of happiness, or, in the crabby author's case, moments of "un-unhappiness." The book uses a beguiling mixture of travel, psychology, science and humor to investigate not what happiness is, but where it is. Are people in Switzerland happier because it is the most democratic country in the world? Do citizens of Singapore benefit psychologically by having their options limited by the government? Is the King of Bhutan a visionary for his initiative to calculate Gross National Happiness? Why is Asheville, North Carolina so damn happy? With engaging wit and surprising insights, Eric Weiner answers those questions and many others, offering travelers of all moods some interesting new ideas for sunnier destinations and dispositions.
In the imaginary Netflix queue of books-that-I'm-planning-to-read, this one has just jumped to the top. By the way, why has no one started a Netflix for books? This question, and many more, I'll leave for another day.
Mineral Museums
Colburn Earth Science Museum
"...
The Museum's primary collection includes some 4,500 specimens from North Carolina and around the world. The Hall of Minerals features the best specimens such as an amethyst crystal cluster from Due West, South Carolina; a green fluorite from the Hamme Mine, Townsville, North Carolina; and ruby in zoisite from Tanzania. he Museum's gem collection includes over 1,000 cut gemstones from North Carolina and around the world. Included is the Sondley Gem Collection of North Carolina gems set in North Carolina gold from the collection of Foster A. Sondley, an important turn-of-the-century resident of Western North Carolina. The Gem Room includes a 220 carat blue topaz from Brazil, a 2,405.5 carat boulder opal from Australia, and rare gems such as hiddenite and stibiotantalite...." Located at 2 Pack Square in Downtown Asheville.
Franklin Gem and Mineral Society
"... Thousands of Specimen on Display! Gems, Minerals, Fossils, Indian Artifacts, Fluorescent Mineral Display, Sea Shells, and Much More...." Admission is free.Map
Museum of North Carolina Minerals
The Spruce Pine mining district is so rich in minerals that most of the 300+ varieties of North Carolina minerals can be found there."... Recently renovated, the Museum of North Carolina Minerals introduces the treasures found in the Spruce Pine Mining District through interactive displays on the wide variety of minerals and gems found in the region. Located at milepost 331 on the Blue Ridge Parkway at Gillespie Gap, the Museum provides an introduction to the importance of mining in the region and the mineral and gem wealth found here. Work is continuing on new interactive displays that will take you deep inside a mountain to see how gems and minerals are formed...." MAP
Browse AshevilleBliss.com's Bookstore
Discover the Bliss of Historic Asheville and Southern Appalachia
"... What a terrific book Timothy Silver has crafted! Anyone interested in mountains, hiking, fishing, environmental issues, natural history, or the local history of North Carolina's mountains will enjoy this wonderful account. Professor Silver, a historian in western North Carolina, has written a book in which Mount Mitchell stars at the center of his narrative--and both general readers and professional historians can find meaning and pleasure in his tale...."
"... If you have the slightest interest in North Carolina's unique pottery tradition, this book provides a lavishly illustrated catalog of the collection of the Mint Museums of Charlotte, NC. Each potter's biography, genealogy and work history is included with an example of the work of each. There are essays by pottery experts to explain the background on various types of pottery, techniques, locations, etc., as well as the history of pottery making in North Carolina...."
"....explore North Carolina while reading literature from our state's finest writers. Organized geographically through a series of eighteen half-day and day-long tours in the western part of the state, the book directs curious travelers to the historic sites where Tar Heel authors have lived and worked. More than 170 writers from the past and present are featured in this volume, including Sequoyah, Elizabeth Spencer, Fred Chappell, Charles Frazier, Kathryn Stripling Byer, Robert Morgan, William Bartram, Gail Godwin, O. Henry, Thomas Wolfe, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Anne Tyler, Lillian Jackson Braun, Nina Simone, and Romulus Linney...."
W.R. Trivett (1884-1966), a farmer born in Watauga County, North Carolina, was also a self-taught professional photographer who left behind an invaluable collection of over 400 glass plate negatives taken between 1907 and the late 1940s in the Beech Mountain community of neighboring Avery County. Along with the photographs (over 90 of which are reproduced herein), a collection of Trivett's personal papers survive, revealing very enlightening information about his life in the mountains.... Through Trivett's images we can, by contrast, see the everyday reality for most people in rural Appalachia.
The premise of the book is simple but intriguing-- here is Amazon's description: 
